For all the discussion going on about the back-and-forth name-calling that took place in the past few days, precious little discussion is happening about whether or not Jennifer Hepler’s idea has any merit. The best I could find was one site (then parroted by many other sites) referencing L.A. NOIRE, which did indeed allow you to skip the fast-paced chase/combat sequences after three failed attempts. What nobody is talking about, however, is that there’s an entire genre of “game” that is actually 100% about story. It’s called “visual novel,” a subset of graphic adventure that basically boils down to choose-your-own-adventure plus voice acting plus pretty images.

Some famous examples include EVER17, 999, PHANTOM OF INFERNO, PHOENIX WRIGHT: ACE ATTORNEY, HOTEL DUSK: ROOM 215, and Aksys’ recent PSP title HAKUOKI (expect a review from me soon!). Oh, and there’s also KATAWA SHOUJO, a strangely endearing cripple-fetish eroge made by fans of the genre, and probably played by (some of) the same people who attacked Ms. Hepler.

Since I couldn’t find any blog post addressing this point after multiple google searches and browsing twitter feeds, I’ve decided to make the case myself. Jennifer Hepler seems like a prime candidate for launching the Japanese-cherished genre in North America. Thus…

BioWare: make the first big-Western-studio visual novel.

Feel free to add bits of meaty gameplay: puzzle-solving, maybe some other mini-games or combat. But make it all about the story. Lots of reading (or listening) with lots of choices. Tell a story, make it memorable, and make the “gameplay” little more than user interface for an interactive story book. Do it with a current franchise, or hell, start a new IP. But give it a try! I for one will pay top dollar for it.

And Ms. Hepler, if you manage to stumble upon my little blog: I’ve always loved stories in games. And people tell me “if you value the story over anything else, just read a book or watch a movie!” Yeah, I get that. But even the tiny bit of interaction that comes from controlling the text and making decisions at key points in the story make said story that much better. I’m totally with you. I mean, I love action games and can do combat all day long, but some days I just want a game that’s nothing but cut scenes and decision-making. So let’s give it a try, and let’s see it happen from one of the best studios this side of the globe.

In the first part of the episode, we interview Hall Hood (follow on Twitter! @Hallhood). Hall is the lead story writer for the Jedi Knight storyline, the Smuggler storyline, a variety of major missions (including the “Taral V” and “Maelstrom Prison” Flash Points), and he’s an all-around knowledgeable and humorous fellow. You’ll not want to miss this, as it is surely our best interview to date. You’ll learn about the three Han Solos! Black bisectors will declare it purple parallel!

After the interview, we (Pete and Pat) go outside the realm of story and talk about all the mechanics of this game. Is it nothing more than a WORLD OF WARCRAFT clone? Can it sustain its momentum? Does it require guild membership, or can the game be enjoyed playing solo? These questions and many more are answered by your semi-expert panel. No, we haven’t reached the level cap yet, but we’re getting closer every day.

Please listen to this episode, tell all your friends, etc. As mentioned in this episode, we’ll soon be attempting our first live episode with our radio network 8bitx so… that should be pretty rad. We also got a new logo! You like? Of course you do. I know I do.

With music from Die Antwoord, mc chris, and A_Rival.

(right-click to save, use the player below, or get the show on iTunes here)

Jurassic Hour #28: The Old Republic

Winter sucks. We needed a month to recuperate.

But now that we’re back, we’re back with a super-long episode. It’s over two hours! We cover everything that ever happened, EVER.

In this episode, we celebrate Pete’s birthday. We also reformat the show! “One Interesting Thing” and “Ask The Experts” has been combined into “Action Items,” where we just check off the personal-ish stuff we want to talk about. On today’s list? Gym etiquette, winter, The Mental Illness Happy Hour, weird work situations, and cole slaw from grandma.

Our gaming/media segments have been put into a little something we call “Buy, Take, Break, Throw Away” (with credits to Five Iron Frenzy). For “buy,” Pete recommends SHANK 2 and GOTHAM CITY IMPOSTORS. I recommend the Indie Game Music Bundle. We also talk about the triple-A titles (like FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 and KINGDOMS OF AMALUR: RECKONING) and why they didn’t quite get the nod. In “take” (free things), Pete recommends the New Yorker investigative piece on Tyler Clementi’s suicide and the students being tried for invasion of privacy and bullying. I mention Superflat Games’ SOUL BROTHER.

In breaking and throwing away things, we touch on Ubisoft’s DRM mistake(s) and the contrasting story of Double Fine’s Kickstarter victory. We also lament the passing of Adam Adamowicz, lead concept artist on FALLOUT 3 and SKYRIM.

Then we break, and when we come back, it’s just me doing a massive interview with two staff members at NIS America. On tap for discussion? Obviously, new and upcoming games (including DISGAEA 3 RETURN on Vita and BLACK*ROCK SHOOTER on PSP). We also talk about their expansion into the anime market, the struggles of localization, the life in sunny Santa Ana, and more. Don’t miss it.

And don’t miss our next episode, coming SUPER soon! It’ll be 100% STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC coverage. Trust me, that’s a good thing.

With music from ONE OK ROCK, Tenpei Sato and Ken Nakagawa.

(right-click to save, use the player below, or get the show on iTunes here)

Jurassic Hour #27: All The Alls

I’ll be providing a times-two review of these games further down, but I’d like to start by re-telling the heroic tale of how I got these games to work, and then not work, and then almost work, and then finally work (well enough to beat them). It’s a cautionary tale, but I’m still proud of what I did.

VIRTUAL INSANITY

Booting up my Win98 VirtualPC while editing this very article. That's *so* meta.

Having had good experiences with DOSBox playing a boatload of my favorite oldschool games (sometimes with my own setup, other times with the setup provided by GOG), I attempted installations of both Battlespire and Redguard. Battlespire’s installation went off without a hitch, but the game wouldn’t boot without some fine-tuning of both DOSBox’s and Battlespire’s config files (I also had to hunt down this obscure old Battlespire 1.5 patch). Redguard, however, couldn’t be done. Even though the game ran in DOS, its installation required Windows 98. There were manual ways to install without Windows 98, and I attempted this, but it was all in vain. For a time, I abandoned Redguard and worked to play the one game I successfully installed.

So, Battlespire in DOSBox. Within Windows 7. This is not a winning combo. Though Battlespire would properly boot and run (after a lot of configuration on my part), the game would still crash, frequently. It seemed to get worse the further I explored the map. By the time I finally finished the first of seven levels (these are mega-levels, akin to HEXEN), the game was crashing every 3 minutes. On the second level, my save files wouldn’t load directly when starting a new session. I’d have to load a save from the first level, and then load to the second level. This had become so unwieldy, I just gave up. After all, I had MORROWIND to play, and that transition (from Daggerfall to Morrowind) was like playing FFI and then jumping into FFIX. As I declared on a recent episode of the podcast, I would just give up on these hard-to-play side games unless a solution plopped itself into my lap.

After clearing Morrowind, that solution did indeed appear in the form of my younger brother.

Sweet little Alex tends not to get involved in my software problems unless and until he knows I’ve exhausted all options known to me and don’t know what else to do. Apparently though, I’m a dummy who never heard the word “virtualization.” In one evening, he swooped in and installed VirtualBox, VMWare, and VirtualPC. All free, legal downloads (the latter was a little tricky, but I’ll cover that).

VirtualBox (a Sun/Oracle product) didn’t claim full support for older Windows OS’s, but I tried. The trick for all these non-DosBOX solutions was that I would also need a valid OS to install (and DOS 6.22 didn’t quite cut it, since finding the proper drivers for things as basic as graphics, mouse, and DVD drive was difficult and the virtualization products didn’t virtualize the hardware as easily as I’d have liked). Though you might expect me to just find ISOs of ’95 and ’98 from obvious locations, I actually own those discs and somehow they never did end up in the trash. VirtualBox failed to run Battlespire at all in Win95, but in Win98, I did get a full install completed for Redguard. However, the in-game experience was badly lacking. Like, the first in-game sequence is a quick swash-buckling event between protagonist Cyrus and members of The Restless League. It took 20 seconds for the “fade-in” to take place, and I had virtually no control over Cyrus. Playable, maybe. But basically unplayable.

VMWare turned out to be an absolute failure. Win98 wouldn’t even install, and Battlespire wouldn’t boot in the “Exit to DOS” command prompt in Win95.

So finally, we turn to the Microsft-sanctioned product “VirtualPC.” Now, when Windows 7 users go to install this feature, it will tell you that only users of Windows 7 “Ultimate” or some other super-editions will garner you access to their downloads page for both VirtualPC and XP Mode. However, only “XP Mode” is limited to these editions. If you have Home Premium or other “Home” editions of Win7, you are entitled to VirtualPC. You have to lie to even get to the downloads page here, but when you download “only VirtualPC” (it’s an option on the Microsoft page), some authentication client runs. For me it detected my Home edition of Win7 as valid and said “you’re good to go, take your VirtualPC sir!” I tipped my hat back to Microsoft and went on my merry way.

VirtualPC is the product for Win98 Virtualization. Let me assure you, there is nothing better on the market. I learned the hard way, so you’ll want to just jump ahead with my recommendation. So here I am with VirtualPC running Win98 SE. Redguard install goes off without a hitch, and the game plays smooth too. Well, fairly smooth. There are these blotchy-blotch artifacts that appear graphically, but I think that’s more the “XGine” engine than anything else (I remember my non-Voodoo PC having similar artifacts with Tomb Raider in my youth). Also, I believe the game crashed a handful of times throughout the play, and the game would run super-fast the first few seconds after loading a save, so you’d have to wait that out.

As for Battlespire… it still gave me headaches, but it was ultimately playable enough for me to beat it. At first I was having this terrible movement problem (the game would force me to walk into walls and then I’d get stuck in them …?). And then I remembered I hadn’t put the 1.5 patch on the VirtualPC install. So I did that, and I also had to grab UniVBE drivers. With these in-place, the game would run, but the sound would cut out after a few minutes of play, and that led to a variety of other glitches, particularly if I got a Game Over (this usually led to a system crash). But, with enough awareness to load a save file before dying, I could go a good hour or two with the no-sound glitch and do fine. Though, I preferred having sound when I could have it, especially because all interactions were fully voiced.

So that’s that. Below I’ll be reviewing Battlespire and Redguard (in that order), but I’d like to put out a standing offer to help you play these games too, should you be so inclined! I will not provide you any pirated software (so for getting the OS’s and the games, you’re on your own), but I will happily help you set up these games to work for you if you’re running Windows 7. Just leave a comment and I’ll help!

BATTLESPIRE REVIEW

A screen from the 5th of 7 levels. This one is big and outdoors-y; it slowed down my Virtualized machine.

Battlespire was originally planned as an expansion for Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, but eventually separated as its own game. It offers a very limited LAN-friendly multiplayer (PvP arenas), but the real game content is the single-player scenario. In this scenario, you are tasked with clearing seven separate levels that start in the Battlespire and eventually end in Oblivion (yeah, that Oblivion). In fact, the final boss is Mehrunes Dagon himself, the evil Daedric Prince who plays the role of villain in ES4.

In this regard, Battlespire is great for its narrative. I didn’t think some junky old game could round out my understanding of Tamriel, but here we are. Battlespire is a prequel, taking place a few years before ES1: Arena (as the Battlespire overthrow is part of Jagar Tharn’s plot to take Septim’s throne). You play the role of a battlemage unknowingly thrown into these events, thinking your visit to the Battlespire to be a regular training event instead of a last-ditch attempt to save Tamriel from the gates of Oblivion.

The game opens with typical Elder Scrolls character creation. You are limited to six races, and all the classes from ES1 and ES2 are available. The stat/skill setup is nearly identical to previous ES titles, with one big exception: leveling is not based on raising major vs. miscellaneous skills. Rather, at the time of character creation and once between each level, you are awarded points to distribute to both stats and skills (this “point” pool is shared!). How many points you earn is based on a variety of factors: skill-ups (major and misc), enemies defeated, loot acquired, etc. Basically, your performance in the level determines your growth. That said, growth itself doesn’t matter too terribly much, since (as always) enemy levels are scaled. Cheating to create an overpowered character (which I tried by editing a save file) just results in overpowered enemies. The true advantage lies in ONLY raising skills and stats most useful to you and leaving others intentionally low. Note: to make PER worth something more than convincing the occasional Scamp to fight for you, they put “Restoration” magic in this category. I think normally it resides with WIL in other games.

Combat remains consistent with prior series entries, though I found the AI pathing to be particularly atrocious in this game. They’ll even cast large explosion spells into walls over and over, killing themselves and leaving you unharmed. Sadly, I found I had to use the dumb AI to my advantage since it would take me about 10 hits with my best-skilled weapon to bring them down, whereas most “tough” enemies (dark seducers, daedra counts/lords) could two-shot me.

I could’ve lived without combat for the most part. What made the game appealing at all (and surprisingly, I was sucked in by this appeal) was the puzzle-style exploration: hit switches, collect magical-dingus items, answer riddles to open doors. That, and of course, the story. It is here that Bethesda really began to flesh out Daedric politics, much better than in Arena or Daggerfall. How does an immortal choose to act, or align, when faced with eternity? Why get involved in human affairs? How can one maintain loyalty in a house ruled by force if that force can never fully destroy its subjects? One human among thousands of Daedra, moving from the Battlespire to various outer realms (and finally, Dagon’s hunting grounds on the edge of Oblivion) is quite the journey.

The game took me about 20 hours to complete. If I could have had a superior virtualization (one with absolutely zero crashes), I’d even consider playing it again with a magic-heavy class. But then again, I’d really just rather play Hexen again, as this is ultimately a Hexen clone with Elder Scrolls skin. Interesting skin, but the mechanics fail in comparison to id/Ravensoft’s classic longform FPS.

Played: 20 hours
Platform(s): PC
Price: N/A (abandonware, good luck finding it)

REDGUARD REVIEW

If you can get the "Glidos" software to work (emulate 3DFX/Voodoo chip), Redguard looks this good. Else, imagine more blocky people and you get the idea.

I’m only a few hours into ES4: Oblivion, yet I’ve twice run into references to this curiosity of a game. In the Imperial City, a pirate wench sings the song of a young Redguard pirate named Cyrus. And when you complete the Orrery in that same city, you are informed by the mage guild member that this is only one of two Orreries known to Tamriel: the other is in Hammerfell, on the island of Stros M’Kai.

Redguard takes place on that island of Stros M’Kai, and you control the Redguard Cyrus. In terms of timeline, “Redguard” goes back further than any game in the entire series. There is an empire, but it’s totally pre-Septim. In fact, I think this one is dated in a different era altogether (400th year 1st or 2nd era, IIRC). The game is completely different from any prior game in the series, too. If Battlespire is a Hexen clone (and it is), then Redguard is a Tomb Raider clone.

Redguard has no leveling or experience points to speak of. It is a traditional 3rd-person action adventure, complete with ledge-hanging, rope-swinging, and swash-buckling galore. It is also story-heavy, and is fully voice-acted. Said voice acting is actually pretty good too, especially for the standards of 1998.

Because your character never really gets “stronger” by means of leveling or equipment, it only makes sense that the game be non-linear at least to a degree. There is only one ending, and there’s only one way to get there. But that way is actually broken into three separate segments, and the order you complete them in is entirely up to you. On Stros M’Kai, there is a main town, an observatory, a Necromancer’s tower, a Dwarven ruin (which is huge), a goblin hideout behind a waterfall, and more. Cyrus’ adventures are all motivated by a personal ambition to reunite himself with his estranged sister Izsara, whose husband he killed a decade before because he (the husband, not Cyrus) was an abusive douchebag. After that event, Cyrus fled Hammerfell. During the time he was gone, there was a bunch of political unrest, and finally a civil war that was ended when the empire jumped in as a 3rd party and strong-armed the whole affair. “The Restless League” is a small remnant of the defeated bunch (“The Crowns,” loyal to the local royal bloodline), and Izsara was an active member in this group before she up and disappeared.

Thus, Cyrus’ desire to save his sister leads to him becoming the inadvertent hero of an oppressed people that hate the Cyrodiil empire even more than they hate one another.

The gameplay is plenty of fun, and the puzzle-solving dungeon is a little less harrowing than I remember the original Tomb Raider being. Thus, while Battlespire is a step down from Hexen, I think Redguard is a step up from Tomb Raider. Though it’s not with its own problems.

For example: remember that “everything runs fast after loading” thing I mentioned earlier? That’s apparently not unique to my VirtualPC setup. That problem has always existed. So, if you save just prior to facing three enemies, and then load from that save… well, good luck surviving. A button-mash on right-click with the “auto-defend” (easy mode) option enabled is probably your best hope of survival.

Speaking of: the combat is a strange mixture of swordplay and rock-paper-scissors. I never did master it in the 25 hours it took me to beat the game. But I found that with enough patience (and health potions), button-mashing with the occasional forward- or back-stroke would do the trick.

The many unique characters and hefty dose of dialogue help to round out a microcosm within the usual (relative) macrocosm that is The Elder Scrolls. Also, the ending is super-satisfying. Hardcore TES-nuts would do well to track this one down.

Played: 25 hours
Platform(s): PC
Price: N/A (abandonware, good luck finding it)

EVEN THIS STARCRAFT II MEME IS BORINGZZZZZ. (Actually, it's pretty neat. Click for tee.)

My roommate lives in a dull, colorless universe, and I’m making it my problem.

No, let’s not talk about my roommate. But really, let’s.

He’s as devout a videogame enthusiast as I am — hour for hour, he probably plays more than I do — and he’s been my best friend for 15 years. I saved his life once (short story: narrowly averted aquatic disaster), which is why I’m chalking up my present irritation to straight-up beneficence.

Since he moved back to Pennsylvania in 2010, following a two-year Peace Corps assignment in Kyrgyzstan, he’s spent his itinerant hours battling online randos in STARCRAFT II. I tore through that game’s single-player campaign for review two summers ago and shelved it almost immediately, terrified of the Internet tacticians who had been prowling the battlegrounds of the first STARCRAFT since 1998.

From a bird’s-eye view, I get the attraction. Blizzard’s creatures are brimming over with personality and strategic potential, begging to be mixed and matched, practically (and often literally) salivating at the prospect of running through their animation routines in pitched multiplayer battles. For a person like my roommate, who grew up fascinated by World War II weaponry and military strategy, or for the hyper-competitive economist who wants to wring every proton of value from his or her purchase, the appeal is clear. These games are crafted with care and built to last.

But what about the rest of us? The weak, the downtrodden and, most pitiable of all, the people who cohabitate with these monsters?

I’ve spent quite enough column inches trying to rationalize my spending instincts with all of you, and I won’t dwell on them unduly today. Suffice it to say, a game doesn’t need to promise much to command my dollar. Heck, a cookie doesn’t need to promise much. I paid a buck for five minutes of jukebox dominance Monday night, and I considered it a valuable investment opportunity because I got to punish a certain West York bar with a Queen song that wasn’t “Fat Bottomed Girls.”

I’m drawn moth-like to new experiences and sensations, and videogames, with their high-resolution skyboxes and frequently impossible topography and careless disregard for Newtonian physics, offer those in their most digestible, addictive form. Some argue that they stunt imagination — that, by showing you everything you need to see, they aren’t engaging cognition centers in your brain the way a book does — but there’s something unifying and indisputably democratic about playing in another person’s sandbox.

Some people can get by on only a few very well-stocked, thoughtfully appointed sandboxes. I need an entire city block of them, and I need game developers — the public works department in this tortured metaphor — to replace the sand weekly.

What’s to be done about the divide, aside from more first-world consternation? I think about my friend’s STARCRAFT fixation with the same seething, barely concealed contempt I usually save for football dorks, but I know the rage is useless and irrational.

And sometimes hypocritical. There comes every so often a game that demands skill and compels me for more than a few hours — I remain absolutely enchanted by last week’s DUSTFORCE, a hybrid racer and platformer which actually insists you perfect its easy levels before it unlocks substantially more difficult ones.

People like what people like. I understand this. But just as an art history major lobbied me (successfully, it should be said) to take a second look at Rothko, I want my roommate — nay, I want everybody — to play DUSTFORCE. And OKAMI. And PERSONA 4 and BULLY and GOD HAND.

There’s a thin line between advocacy and proselytism. I count a few Ron Paul supporters among my friends, so I know this as well as anybody. But at the end of the day, friends don’t let friends play STARCRAFT II forever.

Now that I’ve done that, I’m going to use this space to do the thing I’m probably not supposed to do after a convention: brag about people I’ve met. And, to take it a step further, let’s start by bragging about people who recognized me before I could even say hello and remind them who I am, which sites I write for, the whole line that I practice in the mirror like a nut.

When Dennis and I arrived at the Gaylord Hotel in DC, the first people we bumped into were the obvious stand-out Japanese members of Nobuo Uematsu’s new band Earthbound Papas. It was about half the band, as well as their manager Hiroki Ogawa. I’d met Ogawa-san once before, when he and Uematsu took me out to dinner (with translator Shota Nakama) at Anime Boston 2010 (see interview here). I made awkward eye contact with Ogawa, but didn’t want to bug him. But he put his hand out to shake and said “we’ve met before… Anime Boston, right?” So that was a fairly pleasant feeling. With him at the time were Yoshitaka Hirota (bass, also composer of SHADOW HEARTS series) and Arata Hanyuda (drummer). More on them later.

That evening, coming back from dinner with Jayson from OSV and a whole bunch of Destructoid kids (including new EiC Dale North, who says he remembers me even though I really only met him once, briefly, about 3 years ago at E3… perhaps he knows I write for OSV, which he technically founded…), I walk past the entire Earthbound Papas crew in the lobby. I knew where they’re headed, since another friend of mine was going out for dinner with them (the ever-cordial and ever-enthusiastic Don Kotowski of SEMO). Ogawa-san pulled me aside and reintroduced me to Nobuo Uematsu, who seemed to immediately recognize me as “Pat, OSV, yes?” That was a surreal experience. From their perspective, I suppose that when you’re in foreign country and you see a familiar face, it’s always comforting. But man, two years! The whole band was exceedingly charming and polite the entire weekend, socializing whenever they could find free time with any and all fans. They put hours and hours into meet-and-greets and signings, not to mention their stellar concert Saturday night. And then they remember little old me… for me, looking to them as heroes and trailblazers in the budding world of game music, it was just wild.

Two others who recognized me, that I did not at all expect to recognize me, were Mustin (The OneUps / Bad Dudes) and Grant Henry (Metroid Metal / Stemage). All the bands at MAGFest did a great job this year, but those two are some of my favorites. Metroid Metal was especially solid this year, and OneUps did two different sets.

OH! And I got to spend time with an old pal, Josh Whelchel. When I first discovered him, he had done work on these fantastic, totally unknown indie RPGs THE SPIRIT ENGINE (I and II). Since that time he’s gone on to much bigger projects, and he also created the Indie Game Music Bundle, which patterned itself after Humble Indie Bundle and got a lot of great music to a lot of fans for low low cost.

Before I do any more name-dropping, let’s circle back to Arata Hanyuda. This one doesn’t speak so much to anyone’s ability to remember my ugly mug, but to Mike Salbato’s amazing talents as a graphic designer at RPGFan. Said website did a video interview with Earthbound Papas on Sunday afternoon. Though I’m considered an “editor emeritus” at the site these days, I attended the interview just to provide moral support for the newcomers that handled it (per their request… and they did a great job, for the record!). However, none of them had brought business cards, so at the end of the interview, I dug out some old ‘Fan business cards I had in my wallet and handed them out, just so they had something from RPGFan. When I did that, Arata Hanyuda shot up out of his chair and said: “I met you! FINAL FANTASY XI FanFest!” Now, I knew I had met him then. I remember him being there, and I think I’d met him once before at E3 ’06 for other FFXI activities. But I didn’t expect him to remember me, because he was here, now, in the capacity of a drummer, not a producer/designer with Square Enix. Nonetheless, when I handed that card to him, he immediately realized who I was, and the others in the band laughed, like “man, this kid really gets his name out there.” I’m not gonna lie: I’ve tried. The strange thing is that this time around I wasn’t really trying. I was just there to be friendly and support some of my other writer-friends, and rep for the new radio network hosting The Jurassic Hour, 8bitx. It’s kind of like that saying, “If you love something, let it go, and if it returns…” blahblahblah. Well, I let go of my driving desire to “be someone” in this industry, and it feels like, ever since I let go, things naturally happen that say “look, you’re not a big deal, but you’re not NOBODY either. We remember and it’s cool seeing you around.” That sentiment means so much to me. I hope I don’t read too much into it.

Now then, other people I saw again or met for the first time. Name-dropping is too much fun.

- Shota Nakama: head of Boston’s VGO, translator extraordinaire, and a great musician himself. His orchestra will be hosting a “Distant Worlds” concert in March, and I’m currently working to fit it into my schedule. Travel, lodging, etc.
- Jake “virt” Kaufman: whether you know it or not, you’ve probably heard this guy’s work. He is all over the place lately. For years he’s been the go-to composer for WayForward, and he also does guest arrangements on all kinds of cool stuff (including a Japanese-released “Chiptuned Rockman” (Mega Man) album). Meeting him was a great pleasure. Also got to meet his wife, who hosts a great podcast on Arecibo Radio.
- Speaking of which, I met basically everyone from Arecibo. They’re basically the equivalent radio network to 8bitx, but with slightly different scope of coverage. See our podcast on RPGFan/RPGamer to get a feel for that kind of relationship.
- I also met most everyone from 8bitx, which was great. Creator Will Strouse is just the nicest guy in the universe, and he also saved my butt when lodging arrangements for MAGFest went to crap for me last-minute.
- chipocrite, Luke from Anamanaguchi, and many other chiptune artists. I also got to see my friend Josh “Zen Albatross” Kopstein. He is so cool. I’m toying with the idea of making my own chip music thanks to cool people like them.
- MC Deathbear. He wasn’t at MAGFest 9, but he’s one of the first people I met at 8 and I bought this great lego art from him. To me, this guy is everything I would be if I had no-respect-for-authority-style courage and had no wife or kids. Dude does legit tagging and is also using epoxy-type glue to put lego art around NYC. Like, real legos, stuck to overpasses and stuff. That’s nuts, son.
- Jeff Ball, a great violinist and audio engineer. When I asked him “so what are you working on?” and he said “I just finished recording for MASS EFFECT 3” I was like “oh shiiii that’s rad.”
- David Saulesco, @withaknife on Twitter. People need to learn about this Swedish marvel. I have faith he’s going to go places. He did the soundtrack to one of Derek Yu’s earliest (successful) projects, ETERNAL DAUGHTER.
- All the dudes in the band “Battle Cake.” I don’t have all their names, but I was up with them late-night Saturday-into-Sunday. And they actually ended up pulling out of me this idea I have for a game. I haven’t told anyone about it, but they said it had potential, and considering some of them actually design games… well… I think I have a 40-page outline I need to spruce up and send around. It’s stupid, I know, but I want people to know that I dream up wonderful things too. And that recognition was wonderful.

I was bummed that I didn’t have any sit-down time with Justin Johnston (RadioFreeGamer, a great show from a great dude that I really respect) or Danny Baranowsky (composer for SUPER MEAT BOY, BINDING OF ISAAC). But the event is short, and even shorter when you have to skip the first day (it started Thursday night).

If you want to read about what all happened at the show, there’s great coverage from Jayson at OSV, Don at SEMO, all the guys at 8bitx, and plenty elsewhere. I’m going to dump some photos below, and then I’ll be done talking about it. Well, I might say something about it on the next podcast, but I’ll keep that brief. On to the GAMES, amirite?!

Nobuo Uematsu's band "Earthbound Papas" rehearsing before a show. Totally sweet.

More EBP rehearsal.

Here's me with friends (and friends of friends) from RPGFan. L to R: Brad, Sarah, Dennis, me, Travis.

Hey, there's me again! In the hotel room with the 8bitx crew (Will is the one on my left, your right).

Here I am chilling with my good friend, Jayson Napolitano from OSV. We had just wrapped up our interview with Earthbound Papas (OSV was after NPR! Whoa!).

My attempt at blurry photography during a concert. That there is The OneUps during their first set (Friday, 5pm). Mustin on keys doin' sweet sexy synth bass.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Otaku gaijin-Japan-nut 'money shot.' Minus the porn. I already introduced the people in the back. Up front is Earthbound Papas. L to R: Yoshitaka Hirota (bass), Tsutomu Narita (keys/rhythm guitar), Nobuo Uematsu (organ/keys), Arata Hanyuda (drums), and Michio Okamiya (lead guitar).

I had not just Uematsu but the whole EBP sign my FFVIII limited edition OST (many of the band members had some part in supporting the game, they're all ex-Square employees). Shout-out to vgmworld.com (Kahori Ezaki) for hooking me up with this rare artifact on-the-cheap and in a hurry.

It's rumored that Hirota-san is working on a new game soundtrack in 2012 with Nobuyoshi Sano (sanodg). But until that happens, his last major works were the three Shadow Hearts games. Hence, I brought my favorite soundtrack of the three (SHII) and had him sign it. Dennis brought his copy of the game (which I am borrowing) and got that signed too. Amazing how many people at the con remember Shadow Hearts and showed Hirota mega-love for it.

I have so much fucking shit to do this year.

(I’m writing these words as the regrets strike me; please pardon whatever form they take.)

I work Tuesdays through Saturdays, but most of employed America works Mondays through Fridays. Consequently, no one gives a shit about Mondays, and neither do I, save for the fact that people’s expectations of me are even lower than they are later in the week.

Today, a Monday, I spent about 45 minutes lying in bed, trying to decide whether I wanted to play SKYWARD SWORD, SKYRIM or any other of the dozens of last year’s games I’ve yet to finish. I love many of them to pieces, but my backlog has reached critical mass. Where once I was merely anxious to make a choice, I now don’t want to play anything. If I can’t enjoy it all at once, why do any of it? Et cetera.

That doesn’t mean I won’t keep buying things. For as shitty as I am at playing games, I am really good at buying them. Games I won’t finish, food I’ll allow to rot, books I’ll never start, highbrow magazines whose typography I’ll admire but whose contents I’ll almost certainly ignore.

I’m the reason people write stories about “the new poor.” Insufficiently educated, unambitious, not especially marketable, completely undisciplined, one hardship away from financial ruin. I’m employed at a newsroom I love, and I’m compensated well there, but I habitually test the upper limits of my editorial paygrade. If anything goes wrong — and I mean anything, in an occupational environment where The New York Times writes up a cutthroat like this guy as “something of a darling among media thinkers” — I’ll be well and truly screwed.

Back in bed, at the end of those 45 minutes, I laughed. Loudly. Here lies a man, hung over, not quite single but largely incapable of honest intimacy, worming about in dirty track pants and a wifebeater on a mattress whose bedskirt sits in the dryer for the second time in two weeks, such was the amount of hilarious sex had on it. He has $17 in his checking account, no savings to speak of, two dogs on whom he spends hundreds of dollars per month, a nearly empty gas tank that he refills $10 at a time, groceries bought on credit, and nearly 28 years behind him.

I laughed again, even more loudly, as I noticed my hand sneaking surreptitiously south, as hands are wont to do. Fucking hands, right? I put a stop to it, got up, dressed myself and met my boyfriend for lunch. Came home, started vomiting these paragraphs, and here we are. Anything to put off folding three loads of freshly laundered clothes, which is going to take, like, a fucking hour.

The situation is pretty grim when you catalogue it all like that, but I rationalize everything this way: I’m pretty healthy, I buy organic and eat well, I lift or run daily, I possess some conversational competence, and when my back’s against the wall (or when I finally realize that it has been, for months or more), I overperform. I’ll rise to the occasion if someone orders me to.

And I’m not one of those people, thank fuck.

But. But but but. Those people — those odious, inhuman motherfuckers — are making it work. They are succeeding and behaving the way adults must. They are probably even making money that they do not spend immediately, which seems dumb.

I grade myself on a developmental curve wherever I can (growing up gay, dorky, foreign and frightened sets a person back a few years), but I’ve pushed that excuse as far as I can take it. The grim truth is that I’m fucking inert, and I have some breathtaking impulse-control problems. More than depression or romantic incompatibility or any of the other first-world issues I’m sorting out, my trouble with laziness is the bug I hope to squash in 2012.

I’m talking existential laziness. Not just to-do-or-not-to-do, but to-wake-up-or-not-to-wake-up. To-get-gas-or-to-put-it-off-until-tomorrow. To-buy-potatoes-or-to-skip-them-this-week-because-they’re-in-the-produce-aisle-and-that’s-on-the-other-side-of-the-goddamn-store.

First step: Do that fucking laundry. Second step: Thieves’ Guild.

Happy 2012!

Our 2012 debut was recorded mere moments before MAGFest X started. We weren’t there… yet.

Pete and Pat sat down with guest Dennis Rubinshteyn (an editor at RPGFan) before Pat and Dennis drove down to DC’s Gaylord National Hotel for the convention. In this episode, you’ll bear witness to the various ways we do and do not cope with the stress of the holidays. Pete destroys a pile of laundry while Pat hides from his own flesh and blood. Dennis proudly trudges on with his full time job.

After that, we talk games. Many, many games. I (Pat) am currently in the middle of an ELDER SCROLLS marathon, and I chat that up. We all talk about the magic and mayhem of the holiday sales (Humble Bundle 4 + Steam sales = wallet drain 3000). Many indie games are discussed, including a late 2011 title that we hope did not go below your radar. But if it did, you’re in luck.

TO THE MOON creator Kan Gao of Freebird Games chats with us in the second half of the show, just after we discuss our own experiences with the game. You’ll not want to miss this. Anyone who thinks clever, artful games can’t come out of an old template like RPG MAKER will have to see the error of their ways. This interview might help.

With music from Wild Flag and Kan Gao.

(right-click to save, use the player below, or get the show on iTunes here)

Jurassic Hour #26: That’s So Neurotypical

Hang on, The Cheat... we're blasting off, a-to the moon!!! (which reminds me, To The Moon creator interview in the next podcast episode).

Or, the power of homage.

Back in the day, before everyone decided that intellectual property was a real thing, and writers/composers/artists liberally referenced one another as a method of giving credit and expounding, things were awesome. Now things are a little less awesome.

Wait, no, that’s a stupid way to start this article. Let me try again. (Original opening redacted, but available for readers to view for posterity.)

I saw Martin Scorsese’s HUGO tonight with my wife. It was a fantastic film, and one of the few instances where I felt 3D was appropriate (especially if it has staying power and isn’t a “mere novelty,” as some thought film would be in the early 1900s). It’s easy to interpret a film that celebrates the creation of film as self-aggrandizing, but I think here Scorsese is simply paying tribute to not one, but two artists. The first, spoiler alert, is Georges Melies (not knowing this going into the film made it better. For those who haven’t seen it, I now made the film worse for you). The second is Brian Selznick, the author of the book that the film is based on.

But here’s my big takeaway from the whole film: being reintroduced to the inventors and visionaries of the past through another, more contemporary source, is fantastic — but only if done right! It is very hard work!

For example of the lazier way to do it, think of the kid next door (or being that kid) who hears The Police on the radio “I’ll Be Watching You” and suddenly realizes that the tribute song to Notorious B.I.G. has roots elsewhere. Same with all the big hip-hop hits of that era. And not that they were done poorly (Tupac’s “Changes” against Bruce Hornsby’s original is a favorite of mine)… but they’re not spectacular.

My introduction to Georges Melies came, of course, through The Smashing Pumpkins’ beautiful music video for the song Tonight, Tonight. At the time, I had no idea there was any homage going on. I just thought, “oh cool, old-timey films and artsy-fartsy good times for an alt-rock band.” Scorsese’s film finally brings a face and a name to the style, and it’s only through Scorsese’s brilliant storytelling that I now hold any interest in a man I’d never heard of before. I’m sure the Internet chatter on Melies went up a thousand fold after Hugo’s release.

This takeaway was reinforced when I heard Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No. 1. Why? Because I didn’t know the name of this song at all. I assumed when I heard it in the middle of the film that this must have been a contemporary to Melies, so Satie would have been a good guess. But I was thinking a little older, like Chopin or Liszt. Really? I have no idea what I’m talking about when it comes to piano. I didn’t study nearly as hard as I should have.

How did I recognize the melody at all, then? It was the newest album from Tori Amos, Night of Hunters. Every song on there is based on a classical composition, and then elaborated upon and fit into its own narrative. It’s a Song Cycle. And the song in question is track 3, Battle of Trees.

So there you have it. I knew who Melies was before I knew I knew him thanks to The Smashing Pumpkins (and then through Scorsese), and Satie’s dark, enigmatic Gnossienne because of Tori Amos. Would it be better if I had my own private tutor explaining this stuff to me? Maybe. But I can settle for pop culture giants teaching me, too. Lord knows how much Greek, Nordic, Hindu, and Buddhist mythology I’ve picked up from RPGs. And besides, I’m not in the business of becoming one of the elite. We relish in “allow[ing] our hobby to straddle the line between toys and culture,” after all. Pete’s such a better writer. Just sayin’.

I’m out for 2011. Pete and I will hit you up with some more podcasts in the new year. If I can stop playing THE ELDER SCROLLS III: MORROWIND.

Asked to select the best game of 2011, Kotaku blogger Owen Good voted “none of the above.” Though he enjoyed THE ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM (pictured above) and other releases this year, he argues that no game “was the best at what it did.” Blah.

When I was a junior in college, one of my journalism professors organized an entire lesson plan around the Pulitzer Board’s decision in 2004 to award no prize for feature writing. The submissions that year were so derivative and so dull, she said, that the Pulitzer people, rather than honor the best of a mediocre crop of stories, chose to make a statement about the supposedly sorry state of literary journalism.

Tom Kearney, then the executive editor of The Keene Sentinel in New Hampshire and a Pulitzer juror that year (and not to be confused with York County’s district attorney), later wrote that nearly all of the 162 feature-writing entries in 2004 were “terrific,” and that the board’s inability to select a winner came down to a battle of constituencies and 10-ton opinions.

I mention all of this because of an awful year-end roundtable published Wednesday at gaming blog Kotaku, capping a year of generally good but often embarrassing writing (see their “Gut Check” feature) at the Gawker site. In this particular item, blogger Owen Good votes that Kotaku withhold its award for game of the year, on the basis that nothing in 2011 was of “GOTY timber.” Despite a calendar year stuffed with enjoyable titles, nothing struck Good as “the best at what it did.”

The roundtable proceeds with a gaggle of Kotaku writers playfully berating Good for being so elitist (“Nothing? NOTHING?!” Brian Ashcraft asked), and by the end of the piece, it’s clear that Good’s the only one who feels quite like this.

But Kotaku posted the discussion anyway. The result is 1,800 words of confusing, contradictory navel-gazing led by a guy who wants to turn a yearly pageant into a historical document.

Yuck.

In the games-as-art debate, I sit comfortably on the fence. A game like PORTAL 2 absolutely is art, marrying puzzles to top-notch humor with genuinely moving results. But something like last year’s VANQUISH, which boasted one of the most dramatically impotent stories in the history of video games, was its own kind of art. The thrill of rocketing to cover between the legs of a five-story robot, then pirouetting to safety in slow-motion before venting the heat that’s accumulated in your space-age exoskeleton, is something that a book or movie simply can’t reproduce.

For as long as we insist on playing both kinds of games — and we ought to insist on that — we have to allow our hobby to straddle the line between toys and culture. That means giving year-end awards the respect they deserve, which is practically nil. (See Giant Bomb’s best-of-2011 series, which features prizes in award categories like “Best Sky Game,” “Best Use of 3,” “Eastern Bloc Game of the Year” and “Best Use of Nolan North,” for examples of how to do year-end awards properly).

There’s a reason people throw around words like “film snob.” Homo sapiens is an instinctually tribal creature, after all, and professional critics, like any other subset of the species, have a mammalian tendency to group and to stake out territory. They gather in Circles and Boards to throw Film Festivals and hand out Awards, and we’re supposed to coo at the sheer credibility of it all when we see their names over laurels in movie trailers and for-your-consideration ads.

It’s a nauseating thing, but at least there’s precedent for it. The politics of game criticism are much more delicate, unfortunately, and they don’t leave much room for this sort of pedantic posturing.

Don’t believe in game-of-the-year awards? That’s fine! You’re not alone. But do your readers the favor of bowing out of the discussion before you become the gaming press’ Armond White. If you’re so burnt out that you can’t remember how English superlatives work, hang it up for a few weeks and take a deep breath.