indigozeal

This one didn't work out all that hot. I filled it out a while ago and left it hanging around for some reason.

1. Bruno (Animamundi)
2. Ghaleon (Lunar)
3. Helen (Clock Tower)
4. Gotts (Clock Tower)
5. Morris (Lunar)
6. Dyne (Lunar)
7. Latona (Lunar)
8. Bad Girl (No More Heroes)
9. Odd Bunsen (Cat Who... series)
10. St. Germant (Animamundi)

( Cut )
.

A recent installment of the Q&A feature at the Onion's AV Club asked about pop culture stuff that the writers found hard to get a hold of. Thanks to Yahoo! Japan auctions and scans and torrents and YouTube, that's far less of a question for fans of Japanese gaming than it was a long while ago. I remember the first import book I bought: Yoshitaka Amano's Dawn, his artbook for FF1-4, which I ordered from a black-and-white photocopied catalog from a U.K. comic shop. I had no idea how much art was in it, what quality the book was, even what the cover looked like; I only knew that I wanted to see more of Amano's FF4 stuff than the dribs and drabs that had made it stateside. So little had been disseminated at that early, dial-up stage of the web that almost all of Dawn's art was new to me.

Now, of course, we're drowning in Japanese media. Hell, I have stuff I've physically purchased that I've yet to fully tear into - the last Ultima manga; three Mystic Ark manga. Nowadays, it's less a question of "Can you find it?" and more one of "Do you care enough to fork over the money for shipping?" (Stuff I'd like to pick up if I had the spare change: The Silent Hill 4 complete official guide (there's an incomplete version released earlier that apparently doesn't have as much background info); Clock Tower 3 drama CDs, where the heroine's mother faces off against an old-school Scissorman (though they're probably uploaded somewhere); various Angelique song compilations.) There're still a few things, though, that I don't own for lack of availability rather than lack of money or interest:

- There was a serialized manga for Clock Tower: The Struggle Within/Ghost Head published in some magazine at the time of the game's release that was never issued in tankoubon form. The game's notorious for being lousy, but its tale of a reticent heroine who is occasionally possessed by or has the alternate personality of a brusque, foul-mouthed serial killer is intriguing, and I'd like to see it done right. The drama CDs, narrated by the girl and attributing her personality change solely to mental illness, were effective in the way of a good Twilight Zone episode.

- I've been looking for the original magazine publications of Vheen Hikuusen in Shounen Ace and Asuka DX, but finding old phone-book manga magazines from fifteen years ago isn't an easy task. I've tracked down only the first half of KSK, in which little was changed (off the top of my head, Ghaleon's voice doesn't pique (i.e. his dialogue balloon isn't cracked) when replying "An answer?" to Morris in his office, and that's it). It's the second half in which stuff was changed via the ending being expanded, and it's TnK that had a good number of panels redrawn or replaced. It's not a big thing, but I am obsessive about that book, after all.

- Speaking of Funato, it would be nifty to pick up some of the sticker sheets and whatnot from Funato's early doujin days. I have a few sheets of doujin stationery and a few doujins for some Dragon Quest games I've never played. I'd like to see her Phantasy Star stuff, though.

- This isn't a specific item per se, but the topic does bring to mind a huge stack of Lunar doujinshi that was on Yahoo Japan a few years ago - about twenty books, which was twenty more doujins than had been offered for the entire year then to date. This was in the days before Shopping Mall Japan do-it-yourself bidding systems, so I sent an e-mail to the deputy bidder with whom I was dealing at the time asking for a bid of $200 to be put in. I loaded the auction first thing when I got up the next morning and was delighted to find it had closed well below that...then devastated when I scrolled down and found my deputy bidder wasn't the winner. He'd forgotten to put the bid in. The poor guy was really apologetic about it, and there was no way I could get mad at him, but...dang it, I still think about that and wince. (I think I have only about five paper Lunar doujin, most really short and/or not drawn that well. Some of the older artists have put their entire doujins up on Pixiv, for which I'm grateful. Still...damn, damn, damn.)

- More Lunar misses: There were also settei sheets for the characters of Silver Star Story (the type that're phtocopied and cheaply bound together, then passed out among a game design staff so they have references for character designs) that sold for the equivalent of $50 a long while back on Y!J. I didn't get them because they didn't seem to offer any art that wasn't published in the 100% Newtype mook, but I really should've bit the bullet just to confirm. (I did end up getting the Magical School LUNAR! settei bunch, which save for a couple merboy designs didn't have anything exciting or new.)

- Similarly, around the same time period, you'd often see what I believe was a semi-official-though-distributed-through-doujin-channels Lunar pin and coin set - the pin bearing the Funato pic of chibi Luna & Lucia with the rainbow moon and the lantern you've probably seen; the coin depicting a dragon and that was supposedly an example of Vane currency. They were up for auction so many times, yet I never got my act together actually to get one.

- In non-Lunar news, there were a number of Phantasy Star comics published in the Sega fan magazine SPEC, including one where Alisa refused the crown and traveled around the galaxy with Lutz. I don't believe the comics have ever been uploaded, since SPEC was a rare commodity even fifteen years ago (I recall the price for one issue going into the hundreds of dollars). I'm curious, but the magazines would go for way more than I could ever afford.

- This is a curiosity, but back in the Dawn days, I would order frequently from the import division of the magazine GameFan, despite the fact that they sold Taiwanese bootleg CDs for $60 a pop. (I didn't know about the whole SonMay thing at the time, of course.) They would play two selections of game music while you were on hold - one of them being the "Phantom Forest" orchestration from Grand Finale, and one being a slow track featuring a single horn that I couldn't identify but brought to mind a glorious morning sunrise in a valley. It was so beautiful I haven't forgotten it to this day, but I've never run across it outside that hold music. (Given what was popular in game music at the time, it was probably from a Ys title. I should get listening to various YouTube playlists.)

- Electronic stuff: There was this goddamn Neo Angelique Nyx doujinshi released entirely online in five volumes all about his past, and I cannot fucking find it. It wasn't spectacular, but it was a notch above the doujin material that artists usually relegate to online freebies, and certainly of interest to the folks at the Angemedia comm, who like Nyx a lot. I saw it a few times, and now it seems to have disappeared from the web and my bookmarks. Similarly, the talented Angelique: Maren no Rokukishi fan artist who drew this put together a little three-page postscript manga about Eugene, trying earnestly to make a tentative family with Teresa & Renaud yet still haunted by his loyalty to Leviath and his own unquiet mind. It was evocative and poignant in a small space, but the artist deleted it for reasons unknown, and I lost my copy in a hard drive crash.
Re: Spy Fiction: The English-language website for the game was taken down long ago, and we fans are wondering what it had on it (most of us having found the game through Deadly Premonition and long after Spy Fiction's original release). I'd like to get a look at more of the character designer's drawings for the cast, but it seems that what was released on the Japanese website is all that's in the public eye.
.

Dain, Lunar: Like Ghaleon, more old news, but I'd be remiss not to talk about him when I had the opportunity. I love Dain. He's not smart, but he is wise, and I've never encountered a better or more endearing personification of unconditional love. This entry isn't much more than a declaration of affection, but in the respect of eschewing analysis for pure emotion, it suits its subject well.
(Bonus reflection: Stop teasing TnK Dain about his nose! What's wrong with his nose!? His nose is just fine! Stop it!)

Dixie Cousins, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.: A while ago, I made the unfortunate decision to revisit the Scream movies, which only cemented my conviction that stretching out "hey, we're pointing out how stupid the thing we're doing is before we do it" to film length even one time, much less three, is not a viable form of entertainment.
Anyhow, this endeavor had finally dwindled down to Scream 3, when I was distracted from the first attempted fake-out by trying to figure out from where I recognized the opening-act victim's girlfriend. I finally hit the IMDB, where I was floored - Dixie! Of course! Kelly Rutherford; she was Dixie Cousins! It's sad that Brisco County is so far from my mind (and that Kelly Rutherford got such a limited, thankless role, however bad the movie).
Dixie's role in the program is one of my favorite examples of smart storytelling. Dixie was a dance-hall girl who early on was slotted as the "bad girl" love interest for the adventure-western-comedy-sci-fi program's hero (Bruce Campbell - yes), poised opposite the fresh-faced daughter of the recurring mad-inventor character (John Astin) who appeared in the TV-movie pilot. TPTB, though, saw that Rutherford had such presence onscreen and such chemistry with Campbell that the daughter was never seen again and Dixie was bumped up to female lead. Nothing was wrong with the daughter character per se, but the show saw no use pretending that Dixie's behavior was borne of genuine malice rather than playfulness or in spending time on false posturing that they could on meatier stories; seldom do you see a program so swift and confident in identifying its strengths and willing to eschew convention so freely.

Daniella, Haunting Ground: The woman from my default icon, a supporting character in the meant-to-be-Clock Tower 4 title Haunting Ground, Daniella is memorable for one remarkable scene that signifies her definitive break from reality. The setup in brief: Daniella is a created being deemed unworthy by her creator; she can never rise above her hollow existence as a emotionless puppet. Her awareness of her lack of the spark of life leads her to develop an unhealthy envy of the protagonist, who is a flesh-and-blood, home-grown Real Girl. This mania reaches a head during the heroine's stay at Daniella's castle home: one morning, when the heroine wakes up, she finds Daniella standing by her side, staring covetously at the functional womb she herself lacks; the maid flatly and robotically informs the girl of her inexpressible bitterness that she is "not complete." Daniella then turns and calmly, unblinkingly beats her forehead against a mirror until it shatters, whereupon she takes a shard to use against the girl as a weapon. That is commitment to your insanity. That is an Argento-level fusion of art, violence, and character illustration.

Derek Cuttlebrink, The Cat Who...: There's this old Archie story I remember about Betty quitting the band because she didn't feel she added anything of value - "I just stand up here and shake the tambourine! Big deal!" At the gang's next, Betty-free concert, however, the audience is predictably unenthusiastic about the change-up - despite the band lacking only a tambourine, it's just not the same without Betty. Derek's the Betty to Moose County's Archies; he's seldom of practical use in Qwill's investigations and his activities never really have any relevance to the plot, but the books wouldn't be the same without Qwill dining at the site of his latest underachieving restaurant job and receiving a cheerful visit from his carefree universe. I thought he made a cute couple with the similarly breezy and sunshiny yet more self-directed young heiress-turned-independent aspiring businesswoman Elizabeth Hart, where Derek's world grew a little bit without betraying his core character, but then Elizabeth was killed off in the final books' "I woke up today and hated absolutely everything" stretch with nary a bat of an eye from Derek. I've no idea what poor Elizabeth did in LJB's eyes to warrant such a summary execution (or what Derek did to get such a character assassination), but the E's have passed us, haven't they.

Dietrich Troy, Spy Fiction: I'm glad the letter D got postponed until I got the chance to meet Dietrich - "Or 'unbelievable,' as the ladies call him. All the android ladies." After a while of watching supergreatfriend's LP of Spy Fiction, the Metal Gear Solid clone Swery developed before Deadly Premonition, it began to feel like a bit of a slog - supergreatfriend was doing his best, but the game simply seemed unremarkable. Then comes the second ending, and the scene on the bike where one character is two at once, and the confrontation where the villain explains to his only two friends his reasons for killing the good man he could have been, and, well, the game's remained in my memory for longer and more favorably than Deadly Premonition, which was memorably daring and endearing most of its play length but, in my view, crashed in the last act. The whole incident stresses the importance of ending well.

A side note: It's interesting to reflect how both York and Dietrich (and Billy, for that matter) are awfully fond of using pop culture to shield themselves against the harshness of the world. Both young parental desertees in Spy Fiction model their very disparate plans to set things right on the same creaky spy show.

Ghaleon: I have a hard time visualizing him going to a party. Taking one of his many little tag-alongs trick-or-treating, maybe. For a costume, I'm thinking an elegant yet austere classical monster - like a male version of a yukionna (I really like the idea of a white kimono accented with black on him) or a nopperabou. Heck, he could go as Slenderman. I imagine that magic could make for some pretty convincing effects for a Slenderman costume. That seems too involved, though, for what Ghaleon would want to do, and Slenderman might be a bit tritely memeish for him.
He could be a vampire - the eyes; the fangs; the pallor; later on, he even gets the three "wives." But I think that's a bit hokey for him. (That's a picture, though, isn't it - Dain Harker obliviously being ferried to Ghaleon's keep to sell him some real estate, all the while asking coachmaster Taben if they're there yet.)

Rouj: Now he I can see dressing up as a vampire for the kids.

Tagak: Not dressing up on your life.

Dain: There was a hilarious short skit written by JWL/The Hatless Dezorian a long time ago up on the Shrine to Ghaleon that recast the Four Heroes as the leads in The Wizard of Oz (Ghaleon stuck in his Magic Emperor armor rusted after being left out in the rain, etc.). Dain was the Scarecrow, and I don't think that can be beat as a costume for him. I won't argue with genius.

Niea: She'd make an adorable Little Red Riding Hood. Plus, the color scheme then matches her mother's, which would suit Dr. Evil just fine.

Remilia: I can see two ways here. She might decide to go as one of the heroes of those childhood stories she so loved - one of those twin female Dragonmasters, perhaps? Most likely, though, she'd be up to her hips in Vheen office party planning, which would afford her little time to put together a relatively esoteric costume. More likely, she'd go as a stock character like a witch - tastefully executed (and thematically appropriate), but still easily sourced.

Latona: Latona's statuesque frame and bearing, not to mention her very name, are ideal for a goddess. Nothing so idly decorative as a typical Greek goddess, though - perhaps more an Aztec goddess, fierce and capable of great wrath.
((N)ETA: Hmmm; my ignorance of the Aztecs is showing, as all the goddesses I'm finding are caring mother figures. My mental image is shaped more by the practices of the Aztecs themselves rather than their deities. Perhaps Durga is a better choice?)

Guildmistress: Miss Gulch jokes aside, the Guildmistress's presence is perhaps less assuring (and definitely smugger) than Funato intended. Her personal style is lavish, ostentatious, attention-getting. I think she'd make a good evil queen from Snow White, dripping make-up and stage malice.

Morris: Morris is a tough nut to crack. He's another good mazoku vampire candidate - something that's hokey enough for his students but playfully sexual. But we're going to that well too often, so let's move on.
Morris has the most direct character analogue in Funato's Victorian drama Under the Rose (which transposes several designs & characters from the Hikuusen cast), and the plaid suits of a Victorian gentleman look good on Not Morris. Anachronisms aside, though, that costume would seem to be a little staid for our Premier. Hmm. I'm stumped. But:

That one junior guild member who always hangs out with Remilia: would make a great Rapunzel, though.
.

There's a thread down at the 1UP forums regarding gaming purchases (or failures to purchase, or unfortunate trades) that were later regretted. I honestly don't have many myself, probably due to my spending habits. I'm cheap, so I vet potential purchases pretty thoroughly. That, or I just don't spend that much in the first place, which is probably to my detriment in the long run; I miss out on a lot of premium titles that cost a little more to enjoy.

The one purchase that really comes to mind here is The Adventures of Tom Sawyer on the NES when I was a kid. I really took to the game for some reason after reading an article in Game Players, and I don't know why - I had no particular affection for the story besides watching the anime on HBO. When I actually bought and played the game, though, it struck even little me as glaringly unpolished and unspectacular. The graphics in particular were really raw (and you'd think I'd be forewarned, having seen the magazine spread, but the visuals looked much worse in action, especially accompanied by the game's plinky music). I played the game enough, certainly, but even while young, I knew I was just killing time doing so. Oddly enough, the title seems to be inexplicably well-respected by a few reviewers out there nowadays.

I've seldom had a bad trade experience, as I horde my games. It takes a lot for me to let go of a title, confident that I'll never ever want to go back to it. I regretted trading away even Phantasy Star III at one point and immediately bought my copy back when it resurfaced. The only title I've dismissed without a second thought was Contact, an aggressively nondescript RPG for the DS that does its best to insult the player with its ending.

I do kind of regret spending 30+ hours on Glory of Heracles, which gave back absolutely nothing I sunk into it and is a sort of breathtaking nonentity of a game. It still hasn't disappeared from my shelf, though. I also blew part of a Walmart gift card I won on Zelda: Spirit Tracks, thinking Nintendo would surely never make a bad Zelda game. Even that title I'll still probably finish someday. I must have attachment issues.

Not commerce-related, but I think I accidentally threw away my copies of Mach Rider and Paperboy when I was a kid (I'd lent them to a classmate, for some reason never took them out of my bookbag when I got them back, the bookbag got thrown away at end of term). I was facepalming over that for a while, but now, eh. Mach Rider. (Paperboy's a bit more of a loss, but it pales graphically to the arcade, and how often do I play either nowadays, really.)

(Actually, how often do I play console cartridges at all now? Portable collections and, when morally excusable, ROMs are so much more convenient. I could probably let go of my entire 8- and 16-bit collections without any impact on my gaming.)

One game that incited considerable gnashing of teeth in the 1UP thread was Lunar: Dragon Song. While the game's indeed disappointing, were hopes really that stratospheric for it? Were wonders really expected with the original creators so long absent from the franchise? Hadn't we'd learned by then from the GBA Lufia games about B-team releases for portable systems from dormant 16-bit RPG franchises? I'd missed the entire buildup to Dragon Song's release; the first I knew of the game's existence was when I was in a Walmart one day and happened to see the title in the display case. What the hell happened during its promotional period? I'd never think it...significant enough to provoke such rancor.
.

"Headcanon" quote-unquote meme from Tumblr. Instead of doing all fifty questions for just one character, I'm going to cycle through a list of several.

1. Ghaleon
2. Dain
3. Morris
4. Latona
5. Zain
6. Tagak
7. Rouj
8. Remilia
9. Guildmistress
10. OK, here's the deal: I tried including Niea in the meme, but these things just aren't built for a five-year-old to participate. Therefore, I'm just going to take all the characters into consideration and use the one whom I think would provide the most entertaining response.

( Cut )
.

- There are not ONE but TWO pieces of Tagak fanart on the internet.

- Completely contrary to my expectations, fanartist Umiushi's Lunar 2 fanart site is still online and has animated .gifs of Leo with radio-controlled Destinys and everything. Awesome.


- I wouldn't be linking to supergreatfriend's videos so much if he weren't so consistently excellent. His recent play of the demo of Slender features an unexpected guest star.

- I've always liked this fanart of Albert Wesker I glimpsed again recently, though I originally didn't realize it was supposed to be a Valentine's Day piece. The expression works better out of the context of love, I think, as just a hawkish, inscrutable stare. Unlike most of Wesker's Iceman expressions, there's someone at home here, and that makes it more disturbing.

- You can play Centipede for free legally on the internet now. Er, theoretically. I can't get it to work for my computer. It might need a certain version of Flash or supercookies or something. Let's move on.

- I was introduced to the Japan-only PS1 title Addie's Present by the game box art Tumblr I posted a while back, and I stumbled across on YouTube this gameplay clip boasting a high-quality fan subtitle. I really like what I see: a pastoral adventure in the vein of The Secret Garden with charming touches like a different musical instrument representing each character's speech instead of the typical dit-dit-dah tracks. I'm not sure why it was decided to put glowing Comic Sans in the puzzle screens, but I really want to play this now, and I wish this YouTuber were translating the whole thing.

- Apparently, Silent Hill 2 has separate difficulty settings for the combat and puzzles. I realize this is a common feature in survival horror now, but it still strikes me as considerate upon my first direct experience with it.

- I learned of the existence of this.
.

It seems like I've posted a lot of negativity on here as of late. I can't renege on my opinions, but perhaps I should balance them out with reminders of the stuff in the hobby that made me smile recently.

- Supergreatfriend finished his LP of Shadows of the Damned, an underappreciated action title by Suda 51 (with music by Akira Yamaoka) that fuses grindhouse hellscapes with Día de los Muertos imagery and offers among the typical Suda frathouse bluster some unexpectedly tender characterization for its protagonist and a soupçon of sideways wit. "Sin...Sinchester!" "...It's pronounced 'Sinster.'" "How do you know!?" "My cousin's from Sinchester!"
- This is indescribably beautiful. It deserves to be in a museum.
- It's relatively rare to see anime characters effectively rendered in another art style. The double profile of Dyne & Ghaleon here, besides being really technically proficient and an excellent artistic contrast of the two characters, reminds me of good Don Bluth, and I wish I could see entire cutscenes in this vein.
- You've probably seen this, but: FF3 dialogue box magnets, with raised etched lettering. I'd buy them in a heartbeat if I could recall any examples of FF3/6 dialogue I actually liked.
- I'm not on the Tiger & Bunny fan train, primarily because no grown adult deserves to be called "Bunny," but I think this fanartist did an excellent job of translating its lead characters to another franchise's aesthetic.
- For FF4 fans: beyond awesome.
- It makes sense that there would've been Mystic Ark binsen produced, but huh. Who knew.
- Sherbet-colored fantasy. Also, while we're at it: YESSSSSS.
- CHERYL??
.

I finally lucked past that boss and am now in Twoson, so some brief thoughts so far:

1) I was turned off from the title at the time of the game's initial release by the its U.S. marketing campaign, which can be summed up as: "hey, a Nintendo game has fart jokes now." While most of the NPCs are indeed not worth your breath, the game's premise and small-town-USA milieu has more merit than for which the ads gave it credit: sneaking off as a kid from your backyard in the middle of the night for an adventure under the stars really resonates in a primal way.

2) That said, this really is kind of a hipster game before hipsterism was in full swing. This is most evident in the combat scenes, with their no-effort backgrounds and willfully dreadful music - "ha ha, look how stupid this combat is!" - and even the 8-bit retro look (though it does have real work and art put into it) can be said to be offered in a similar spirit. A little more charm for its own sake and a lot less self-conscious Wackiness would go a long way.

3) The towns are a bit much sizewise. It's like an entire itinerary of Meribias. (I like Meribia, don't get me wrong - it's well laid-out, and you get a satisfying bang for your buck - but it is a big bite to swallow, particularly with the similarly-huge infodump of Vane/Vheen coming directly after it. Sorry, this is turning into another Lunar entry.) The game lets you rent bicycles to get around town more quickly, that tells you how big they are. The vapidness of NPC dialogue doesn't exactly provide a carrot for all that wandering. It makes me appreciate Phantasy Star, particularly II, a bit more; that series (except III, but when are we not excepting III, really) had town size down, I think. I appreciate what Earthbound is doing with its Mana-like seamlessly-interconnected, stroll-around world map, though; it further fosters the concept of "kid roaming around neighborhood high on his own imagination."

Sources say this game takes about twenty hours to complete, which is a relief. Too many RPGs, particularly modern ones, don't know the value of restraint. I look at Xenoblade and its ninety-hour playtime and can only gape.
.