indigozeal

I'm not really fond of the word "fandom," since it connotes a lot of bickering and cliquish politics. I had, though, an encounter this weekend that got me thinking about how the environments & communities differ in various fandoms.

- I've mentioned this before, but Phantasy Star had a lot of creative & industrious fans in its heyday. There was a great deal of socialization, with a few healthy gathering spots, but everyone was off doing their own thing, with their own websites & projects. It's dwindled considerably from that apex, naturally - there've been no new releases in the classic series since the Genesis days, and the PS2 remakes of the first couple games didn't make it over here - but there're still a number of people maintaining good sites, and still projects ongoing. It comes to me in writing this that my early experiences with Phantasy Star fans were the basis for my idea of what a good fandom should be: a good main community and a few good healthy sub-communities, but everyone can participate in their own way.

- I've also gone through the contrast between the Lunar fandom and the PS fandom before, despite the big crossover of fans between the two back in the day. There's one community, the one at LunarNET; you're either in their circle or not in the fandom at all. You can't be doing your own thing on the outskirts. There's a clear hierarchy of fans, with a certain few's opinions dictating how others should follow, and...ahhhh, I don't want to be in the muck here. I'll just say that I really don't like this arrangement; I hate the idea that my ability to be a fan of something is limited by my ability to negotiate the politics of an insular group.

- Baten Kaitos folks are great. They're very welcoming and supportive, genuinely enthusiastic about new content that comes into their community. They've chalked this up to the relatively small size of their fanbase - which actually is relatively big & active compared to what I'm used to; I guess they're comparing themselves to the fanbases of other sixth-gen RPGs, which I imagine are utterly huge compared to what I'm used to. It might also be due to the nature of the game, which is a very friendly & optimistic title. Whatever the case, it's pleasant to have discovered such a community of nice folks.

- Final Fantasy IV is kind of ruined for me. Part of it is that everything is contaminated with After Years stuff, and it's not my place to tell people not to be a fan of something, but the game's so obviously bad that when I come across After Years material in the "final fantasy iv" tag on Tumblr, I feel actively resentful that people aren't warning for it, like with certain porn fetishes in fanfic. Part of it is that it's very much a faux pas to be a fan of my two favorite characters, Kain & Rydia. With the former, you attract a lot of trolls complaining about the character's "entitlement issues" and demands that you acknowledge that he's responsible for everything short of the Sixth Extinction, and with the latter, you get a good deal of passive-aggressive comparisons to Rosa, and - well, I understand why folks feel the need to champion Rosa, because there really aren't a lot of heroic moms out there in RPGs, but the problem is that she's still Rosa, a character notable for a) having her dialogue consist mostly of crying out her husband's name and b) passive-aggressive mean-girl snubs at Rydia. Rosa is a vapid jerk. Rosa ain't worth it. Anyhow, as you've gathered, my discontent is based on rather individualized issues, but the fandom as it stands aggressively runs counter to my own tastes, so it ain't got much for me.

- Chrono Trigger is so big that there really isn't a fandom, just a heck of a lot of people who love the game. It's one of those games that's crossed over into the mainstream consciousness, and you have a lot of big talents, particularly artists, producing a lot of great stuff for it. You can wander through tags and whatnot for it at any given time and find a number of great new pieces with no problem.

- Angelique is small due to some knowledge of Japanese being almost a prerequisite for being familiar with the franchise. It's very scattered, but I know some great folks through it. It unfortunately sparks in a number of people this kind of backbitey...mean streak; I don't know how else to put it. I don't know if this is a dating-sim thing in general, spurred by possessiveness over the characters, or what, but I've seen people get really snide over other people's projects - there seems to be a sense that no one should touch this franchise but them, even though the malcontents themselves are usually not doing anything with it. (And, good Lord, the fandom in Japan hates the fandom overseas. Just utter despise. I've seen fan artists - multiple artists! - actually take down their webpages because a foreign fan linked to them.)

- Clock Tower doesn't really have a fandom. It has a board and a wiki that are kinda-sorta active - or that have a few people who work or post on them kind of frequently - but not really anything I'd call a community. (The difficulty with tagging franchise stuff on Tumblr contributes to this; several of the games have varying names, and you can imagine the "clock tower" tag is crammed with photos that aren't related to Scissorman. I am now sick to death of people who tag WeHeartIt photos of Big Ben with the "clock tower" tag: "Hey, do you like clock towers?! Well, I might be going a little obscure for you here, but have you heard of this 'Big Ben' one?!")

- Ib has a huge artist fanbase, particularly in Japan. I'm shocked by the number and quality of the pieces that come out for this little inspired title. (I still think that the kids' movie I proposed a while back would be an excellent venture for this property done right. Clearly, the support the game has demands something more.)

- Illbleed also has a fairly active fandom, probably due to a couple high-profile LPs of the game (supergreatfriend & Game Informer) that have brought its craziness to a wider audience. (There are also some Sonic people who have unironically glommed onto that Zodick parody OC.)

- Ultima has some enthusiastic, welcoming folks, but it also has, due to the age in which the franchise had its heyday, a good number of PC Master Race people who never got out of that late-'80's RTFM mindset: the idea that the world begins and ends with comp-sci, that mastery of it represents mastery over the known universe, and that any other subjects must by necessity be trivial and any issues or questions dealing with said subjects can be instantly dealt & dispensed with by comp-sci majors, who, of course, know everything, or at least everything worth knowing. (I was working with another fan in putting together an Ultima manga scanlation once, and the maintainer of the board where we were discussing the project - who was in no other way involved with it - interjected to say that he'd have to investigate this "scanlating" thing himself and get back to us on it, as it was obviously an arcane subject and he'd have to inform us on what we were getting into, because we wouldn't understand otherwise.)

- I'm sure Silent Hill has a very healthy fanbase, but I find participating in it to be daunting, since utter mastery over this huge lore seems to be a prerequisite for joining.

(Fandoms that ain't got nothin' that I wish had more: The 7th Saga; Mystic Ark; Spy Fiction; King's Quest.)
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I'm basing this on the general outlook of the game's universe. Is there a good for which to fight, is good beside the point (and status quo supreme), or is the universe malevolent? Do you obey the given authorities, act by or to defend your own values & ethics, or is hellzapoppin'?

Lunar: Lawful Neutral. You do what Althena tells you because she's the goddess, and that's it. There may be higher ideals invoked on occasion, but that's the overriding rule.

Phantasy Star: Neutral Good. Right and morals are upheld by a band of outsiders working outside the system. Governments are unlawful or nonexistent. (III, as always, is kind of an outlier here; most of its heroes are royals, but the states themselves have very little relevance. You're left to your own devices for most of the tale, and the whole thrust of the story, such as it is, is to overcome your culture's ingrained bigotry and do what your heart thinks is right. I could see a Lawful Good argument but am content to leave it in Neutral Good with its cousins.)

Lufia: Lawful Evil. I hesitate here, because human governments in Lufia are reliably incompetent, and the little, defenseless humans of the world are left to fend for themselves, but in a larger, cosmic sense, there's a strong feeling that said little guys are merely acting out their sanctioned roles as humanity's defenders. The defining aspect of the world is the malevolent gods - the only gods we ever see - though humanity is given a bit of a sporting chance.

FF4: Lawful Good. The whole game is good royalty and soon-to-be-royalty helping to defend the integrity of good royalty and their kingdoms, and everyone's reward at the end for virtuous conduct in the service of the states is governmental power.

FF5: Chaotic Whatever the Fuck. I'm torn between Good and Neutral, leaning toward the latter; the game's really genial and really doesn't wish ill on anyone, but at the same time, the goals are the game aren't much beyond mere survival and reacting to whatever crazy stuff is happening at the time.

FF6: Chaotic Neutral. Despite the whole ending recitation of the little rays of sunshine that have kept them going through the hell of their world, the characters aren't fighting for any higher values per se; they just want everyone to be able to live in peace. (The world's not Chaotic Evil because while good's hard to keep going, it is possible. Things have gotten to a fucked-up state, but not because it's their natural inclination to do so.)

Terranigma: Lawful Neutral. The world is born, lives, dies, and is born again, indifferent to suffering on an individual basis. Everything is part of a cycle.

Legend of Mana: Chaotic Evil. Kill your allies, kill strangers, kill everyone. Why? Who cares! The whole stuff with the Mana Tree is kind of beside the point of the main plotlines of the game, which choke out everything else.
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- In my futile quest to track down a copy of Secret of Mana locally, I phoned the electronics department of the Montgomery Ward store in the town mall, and the employee burst out laughing when I told him the name of the game. I'm not sure why a title like "Secret of Mana" would send someone who worked in electronics over the edge, as there was no shortage of more implausible titles in more mainstream games. Maybe he was just covering the department for the day, though.
I had previously tried to find a copy of Mana in the local pawn shops, which Montana, being a state with legalized gambling, had in droves. RPGs were just too rare and too coveted by their owners ever to find their way into hock, though. I did, however, succeed with this tack for Phantasy Star III, which was little-loved even in its day.
(I backed off once I read reviews and learned that the game didn't really follow from PS2 storywise or in spirit, but before PS3's release, I was really het up to get the sequel to one of my favorite games. The prospect of PS3's retail price drove my father nuts, though, from more of a comparison than an objective standpoint: "You could get a whole software program for that!")

- Back when zines were still a viable platform, I subscribed to this zine that offered a smallish but extremely eclectic smattering of used videogames & systems, complete with black-and-white photos of the merchandise taken by the owner and smearily Xeroxed. This is how I got my copy of the original Phantasy Star, which was at the time a scarce & hot property. (The owner was devoted to the Atari era and didn't truck much with RPGs, complaining in one issue that he didn't want to "offer up his life" to a title that took dozens of hours to beat.) I actually sold my copy of PS3 to the magazine, but I regretted it (why?) and bought the game back when the person who purchased it traded it back in.

- A few of my RPGs were bought at this tiny independent game store that was in, effectively, a tiny two- or three-room yellow clapboard house, set off by itself on the deserted side of a road that ran past the town shopping center. I remember the shop primarily for my purchase of Phantasy Star IV, which was retailing for $100 at the time; the owner told me over the phone that he was selling it for his wholesale price, $80, because he didn't want to see anyone paying Sega's ridiculous retail price for the game. I haven't a clue whether $80 really was his wholesale for PS4, but he was certainly the least expensive option, and I was grateful to get the game for that.

- The shop didn't last that long past the point at the turn of the 16-/32-bit era where gaming got a bit more mainstream and titles that were considered "specialty" before became more widely available. I remember being struck by how unusual it was that I was able to get a hold of a copy of Chrono Trigger at Target. (It had even been advertised in the store's weekly circular, huge photo and everything.)

- I got my first arranged game soundtrack (Celtic Moon for FF4, I believe) through Diehard GameFan's in-house ads at the back of their magazine. At the time (early 32-bit era), GameFan was one of the very few places you could get import games and merchandise, and they really gouged you for the privilege. They sold the Son May pirated versions of soundtracks for $60, which was a complete ripoff, but I was so glad to get soundtracks and arranged versions of SNES RPG music that I didn't care even when I learned the truth later. They were an early window to Japan, and their ad spreads were fascinating reads.

- There was a point where I was obsessed with buying all things Final Fantasy IV (well, Final Fantasy II then). In the SNES days, this amounted, basically, to strategy guides: I would even buy generalized multi-title system-wide SNES guides from, say, Compute! magazine if they had a chapter on FFIV. I just wanted to read other people talking about a game I loved, which was a rarity in the pre-/ur-Internet days.
Anyhow, I think I've told this story before, but for some reason, my local video/bookstore occasionally carried copies of the UK gaming magazine Super Play, through which, in a roundabout way, I discovered the existence of Dawn, an artbook collecting Yoshitaka Amano's work on FF4. (Super Play wrote about a RPG zine that I ordered; they, in turn, mentioned the book in passing, I believe.) This book became a huge holy grail for me; the idea of an artbook from Japan dedicated to a videogame was a new and alien concept that went leagues above and beyond the books connected with FF4 I had at the time. I somehow found out (I think I contacted the zine's publisher) that the book could be bought from the U.K. comic shop Forbidden Planet, so I looked up Forbidden Planet's contact information from an ad in Super Play, requested a catalog from the place, waited for it to be delivered from Britain to the U.S., then placed an order for Dawn, and then waited for that to make its way across the Atlantic. I don't recall what I paid for the book in total, though I recall it being less than one would expect for a transaction that involved three continents. Dawn isn't really remarkable - you've seen all the FF4 art it has online (it's not like there are character sketches or anything), and I hardly look at the dang thing today. I think it was my first import game book, and it's memorable these days more for the lengths I took to hunt it down.

- Experiences in not purchasing games: my SNES copy of Final Fantasy III was sent to me by a penpal with whom I had exchanged the sum total of one letter at the time.

- The above penpal had eventually also sent me a copy of a VHS tape he'd made of a few of the anime sequences to Lunar: The Silver Star and all of the sequences in Eternal Blue. His enthusiasm was my gateway to the series, but I bought my copies second-hand; they didn't come with the manuals. I ordered replacements directly from Working Designs, but a couple months went by without them arriving. Now, I was on AOL at the time, and I had happened upon AOL's Lunar...forum? bulletin board? whatever the term was in those days, which was very occasionally frequented by...Victor Ireland. Victor had been silent for a while when conversation turned to a couple posters who were also experiencing delivery delays for merchandise they'd ordered from Working Designs. I mentioned my manuals in passing, then forgot about it - until a week later, when they promptly arrived. Of course, it could have been just serendipitous timing on the part of the USPS, but I remember the eerie feeling when I realized that my idle online chatter (posted under a variant of my real name) was actually being read by and getting back to somebody.
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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.
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Stickers depicting Phantasy Star II, Final Fantasy IV, and other titles from Akari Funato in her doujin days.
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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??
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I'm thrilled to see that someone's making Animamundi fanart, particularly of the caliber of Candra's work - bold color, strong Art Nouveau-esque lines, and a Lady Death aesthetic. She has other fanart and original work well worth checking out, if you've no problems with the frequent S&M milieu. (Er, but don't go to that Castlevania section at work, unless your boss is particularly permissive regarding scenes of Richter Belmont in various sorts of distress.)

This is just darling.

You've probably seen this already, as it's being reblogged all over, but: If children's drawings were made into toys... (I'm not sure kids mean their drawings to be so literal, but some of the toys made in this vein are incredible.)

"Boldly Gone" is a hilarious and well-drawn webcomic about one of the countless unseen Starfleet captains who aren't named Kirk.

Omigosh! It's Phantasy Star cross-stitch! Also, this.

Speaking of which: oh, Shilka, you dope.

Would you just look at the lush private interiors and glassy rainbow futurescapes this person is posting on Pixiv?

Prepare yourself for fashion eyelashes.

Yeah, that stuff about Tom Bombadil doesn't add up, does it?

There's next to nothing out there for Spy Fiction fanwise, but here's a nice pic of Billy.

A Tumblr for awesome videogame boxart. I've already gotten a few leads on possibly intriguing titles to play - Forget Me Not: Palette, Addie's Present, Yuuyami Doori (is that one related to Twilight Syndrome?)...

Oh, like you fuckers know a thing about Cut Bank. Hollywood, weren't you satisfied with that flick with Seth Green and Vin Diesel from a few years ago that tried to say tiny, tiny Wibaux was large enough to have its own sheriff? Didn't that movie use the exact same plot as this one?

Rebecca Tripp might catch your ears through her light and delicate FF4 and FF6 arrangements, but it's her themed collections of short original compositions based on the zodiac and garden flowers that truly distinguish the artist. Someone get this woman to score a game already.

Finally, Arios cosplaying as Nyx.
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There've been a few efforts to rehabilitate Secret of Evermore's image over the years, but none of them have really stuck. The product itself is inescapably broken and buggy and rather charmless.

The only moment in the game that made any sort of lasting impression is when you first set foot in the medieval fortress of Ebon Keep. You've just crawled up through the sewers, you emerge in this neglected, grimy old fortress, and the only soul around to greet you is...

You want about 6:20 on there. Sadly, there's no video of the scene readily available without LPers talking over it, which breaks the spell of the scene considerably.

Actually, forget it; I'll just describe what happens. Inside a lonely, dusty building, you meet Cecil from Final Fantasy IV, who's retired from adventuring to "settle down...and live a quiet life here." He'll ask the player if she remembers his "victory over Zeromus" - or "the time I turned into a Paladin", or his "adventures on the moon" - and if she answers his entreaties in the negative, he'll respond with only a monosyllabic "Well." that communicates disappointment but not surprise.

A bit of backstory here: by the time of Evermore's release, Final Fantasy III-come-VI had taken over as the new RPG hotness, and FFII/IV was viewed as hopelessly antiquated, relegated to history's dust bin. It seems unfathomable in these heady days of FF4 sequel/rerelease overload, but the scenario presented of Cecil shuttled off to cobwebbed nowhere, piteously asking if anyone remembered him and resigned to his own apparent irrelevance, wasn't far off base from reality.

The track playing during this encounter (entitled "Cecil's Town") was composed by Jeremy Soule, who went on to become Kind of a Big Deal, or at least a bigger deal than he already was (he scored Morrowind, among freaking countless other games). The simple, pecked-out piano here communicates loneliness, antiquated irrelevance, and just a touch of what might be construed as either self-pity or delusional hope, epitomizing the above drama well. It's an uncomplicated reason for spotlighting it, but "Cecil's Town" is perhaps the one track in this countdown that best fulfills the mission of program music: hearing it instantly transports me back to the scene it scores.
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- The Adventures of Lolo
- Angelique, the first one, which I've never finished or even gotten past the introduction
- Athena. Yes, the SNK game that seems to exert a stranglehold on the minds of whomever plays it, either to gripe disproportionately about its obtuse yet ultimately run-of-the-mill mediocrity or because it had a female lead in the dark days of early consoles and was kind of distinctively twee for the U.S. NES market
- Brain Lord. I think I was curious about Enix games that used the 7th Saga sprite style.
- Brandish, which has its own folder, for some reason
- something titled "FF1.GB", which I guess is Final Fantasy Legend
- patched Final Fantasy II for NES which I never finished, partly due to being disaffected from getting lost at sea on the way to Mysidia for five hours and partly due to the translators having a villain escape with a cry of "You spoony...guy!", which, come on, that's not even trying
- Final Fantasy IV SNES Japan original recipe
- Final Fantasy Legend II
- Live A Live. I don't think I ever even loaded that game. Why haven't I finished it yet?
- actually, it appears I have two versions of Live A Live, patched and unpatched
- Something called "LoveLetter." What the heck game is this? I can't even imagine what platform--::checks:: oh, it's a font. I've always been horrible at organizing my folders. I don't think I deleted a single one of the original .zips from the ROMs I downloaded.
- Lunar: Strolling School
- some Nakayoshi game
- what I think is the Pong bonus game from the Working Designs Silver Star Story ("PCE_LSS_PONG.PCE")
- What are apparently Phantasy Star 1 and 2? What the hell am I doing with these?! And Phantasy Star II has a whole suite of game saves; I've never played PS2 on my comp!
- I have played lots of original Japanese Phantasy Star III on here, though. I've probably played more Phantasy Star III than I have of the Phantasy Stars I actually like combined. How did my life go so wrong.
- a bunch of Sailor Moon games, the Final Fight clones from the first two seasons and one of the puzzle games, probably
- Seiken Densetsu 3. Another one I have to finish. I probably waited for the console experience; I can't imagine playing Mana in WASD format.
- Shadowgate. Ha, ha, like I'm ever gonna finish that.
- Super Mario 2. I don't think I've ever finished that legitimately.
- "Surging Aura." I have no idea what that even is. Hold on. ...OK, apparently it's a Genesis RPG that this page compares with Phantasy Star IV. I'm sure that connection's why I have it, but I honestly have no memory of this dang thing.
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Why not. Let's do this. Let's be baldly commercial.

The role of Ghaleon's BFF is already filled. Besides, I want Ghaleon to have a better class of friend than me. Rena from Lunar Strolling School, likewise, already has a famed BFF, and she and I think I'd be a little sedentary for her.

Oddly, you know, I'm almost disposed to pick Luca from The After Years. Bright, personable, can-do attitude, intriguing hobby, with an airship and walking, talking dolls and all the best toys. Also worth consideration is St. Germant from Animamundi, who's such a nice, sweet fellow, or Angelique's Lumiale - a calm and nice person with whom you can spend a quiet afternoon.

This is one of those questions where it's intriguing to check out other folks' responses. Someone said Travis from No More Heroes, but I dunno. I don't think you'd be doing much with hhim besides staying at home and listening to him talk about his favorite porn movies. Then you get your head sliced off and thrown through Travis's window in the sequel.

Kevin Ryman! Someone remembers Outbreak, joy. Kevin'd be good for a certain type of person. I can't imagine getting along with him, but if you're on his wavelength, he'd be a great friend.

Rydia, yes. No reason given, and no reason necessary. Atrus from Myst, because "the man can write worlds" - best reason of any.

"The frog from Frogger"? What the heck, person? I've actually seen multiple people pick Silver Star's Alex/Arhes here; guys, he's a largely-mute JRPG protagonist! He barely has a personality! Multiple people also picked the 7-up logo from Cool Spot, which...??? Perhaps the most unique and charming pick was the knight from Joust: "There is something...mesmerizing about that plucky bastard and his bird fighting off pterodactyls."
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