Reviewieran Iconography 101.

The casual reader might suspect the occupants of the Reviewiera offices of being a bit off, and to support that inkling I submit Exhibit 1 in a series of many.

Maybe it was the five pints I imbibed, or the late, heavy meal I ate, or the level 6 mission in Advance Wars 2 I finally completed right before I went to sleep, or the shitty sleep I got thereafter since some car wrecked or something near my residence and some tow truck was making holy fucking hell noise at 3:00 a.m., or maybe it was all of those things in a punch bowl that was spiked with me swimming in the Willamette River down in Milwaukie¹ the day before.

Whatever it was, something in the middle of the night x-rayed into my brain the image of AstroBoy's head imposed over the basketball part of the Larry O'Brien NBA Championship Trophy.

Since I'm not one to ignore providence, well, if you get the impression you should put the head of Astro Boy on top of the Larry O'Brien Trophy, then YOU PUT THE HEAD OF ASTROBOY ON TOP OF THE LARRY O'BRIEN TROPHY!!



The new crest to festoon the battle standards of the Reviewiera mecha-nized legions? A unique Reviewieran conflagration of stuff with other stuff? Either way I am powerully moved to place an order for some stickers...

The ghostly visage of Astro maliciously glares at you...²



-d.d.

¹ Yeah, you heard right!! Me! Swimming! Willamette River!
² And, as everyone knows, the best Astroboy story was the one where he lost his faith in mankind, and decided to fight against humanity, rather than protect it. Brrr!!!

Plastic Forms of Escape III

Probably for the better, my appetite for brightly-colored injection-molded plastic has significantly diminished, from its hoary heights three years ago to a little more than a passing yet learned interest.

Credit where credit's due, but a significant factor in this precipitous drop-off was the passing of the venerable and cluttered and charming Dr. Tongues' 3-D House of Collectible Toys up around east Burnside and 14th.¹ Since Tongues fell victim to the double whammies of recession and the commoditization of geekdom², I have steadfastly refused to take my business to some bullshit faux-geek hipster boutique, & of the few purchases made since³ are of the online variety.⁴

Just this past glorious Labor Day, however, I was at the local Fred Meyer marketplace, & betwixt the aisles were the ever familiar clearance tables. I've never had much luck at the clearance table market⁵, but this time these bizarre, cutesy, Japanese-animination-esque, robotic- or at least power-armoured monkeys caught my eye. A cursory look-over revealed them to be from some Jetix television series, which, like so many cartoons today, has adopted a very heavy yet watered-down "anime" look, or at least character design, to it. ⁶

Of course, I don't give a shit about the show. The yellow one, "Hyperforce Nova," with clenched fists nearly the size of her head, was making eyes with me. Her clearance sticker marked her down from about $8 to $5.50. Good enough for me.

Later(!), enjoying a pint at Hedge House, girlfriend points out to me that the table was one of those "60% off whatever the sticker says," so I check my receipt, and sure enough, I paid a mere $2.25 for this cutey-pie!!


Waitaminute! This looks familiar…

Rearward-swooping spikey-thing at the top of her head? Check. Fin-like ridge thing that starts above and between the eyes and curves back and then down behind the head? Check. Large, bug-like eyes which suggest protective eye-wear? You betcha. Small mouth, or at least set at such an angle as include the chin, sorta? Yep.

Familiar... like... looks like..

[snaps fingers]

Oh yeah! Like Ultraman Astra!!



Always thought Astra stood out in a crowd, the jaunty motherfucker.



-d.d.

¹ Dr. Tongues, however, perseveres on the infobanh
² Seriously. I mean, comicbook shops that rely on the sale of Pokemon cards to stay afloat? The absolute glutting of the movie-houses w/ comic-book after comic-book adaptation? Adult Swim? Ugh.
³ Stikfas, of course.
⁴ Credit where credit's due: my girlfriend still buys me an action figure my birthday and/or X-mas. Ahh.
⁵ As opposed to Fat, who has had some decent success, scoring everything from Gundam model kits to GBA games, the jerk.
⁶ I'm not sure if its ironic or sinister or simply cross-cultural exchange at work, but:

A) Far as I can tell, JETIX is a block of animated programming on the Disney channel that features Japanimation-esque series. In other words, Disney appropriating Japanimation styles & design.
B) Generally acknowledged alpha-patriarch of the Japanese manga AND Japanese animation, Osamu Tezuka, cites the art and animation of Walt Disney as his inspiration (Mickey Mouse, it is said, is why Japanese manga & animation character have those big eyes).

Freaky!

this week in retail and rage

O. Introduction.
Right now I'm exceedingly cravy. Between Starfox and Deep Labyrinth, my RPG-hunger and my appetite for space shooters are both powerful and sharp. Unfortunately, I'm broke as shit, and need to save some room in my budget for Contact and Baten Kaitos Origins later in the month.

Since these 'Cube and DS games are out of reach at the moment, there's only one outlet for my depraved retail and gameplay desires: my beloved pink handheld, the mighty GBA. I have thus far adopted a two-pronged strategy. To appease my desperate need for a new RPG, I have told myself most sternly that first, I must finish an old RPG, one already in my collection. And to satisfy my overwhelming desire to purchase something, I have embarked upon a massive clearance-rack safari. I shall treat of these out of turn.

1. Shooting for clearance, with clearance to shoot.
Yesterday, I put in four hours on my bike, roaming around, hoping for some clearance magic. Really, I was looking for Nanostray, a DS space shooter by this company Shin'en, who made a super-neato GBA space shooter called Iridion II. Seemed like a cheap way to scratch the itch caused by Starfox.(1) Struck out, though. Out of the two Targets, two Freddys, Circut City, three GameStops and an EB, there was no trace of Nanostray.

Indeed, there was little trace of anything even slightly interesting. Some Star Wars game where you use the Millenium Falcon to do shit, fly around, probably, blow stuff up. Now, not to offend, but I've logged my hours in Tie Fighter, I've played a fair bit of X-Wing, and the Millenium Falcon is pretty close to the bottom of the list when it comes to ships from that universe I'm interested in flying. Teen Titans for ten bucks for the 'Cube, that mighta worked, or Lego Star Wars, but I really did want something handheld, and something in the shooter genre, while I wait to score my next RPG...

Finally, however, at least a little bit of lightning struck. SigmaStar Saga. This is an RPG...whose random battles are space-shooter segments. I have no clue how long this will remain engaging, but for a ten-spot, it seems like a lovely way to provide myself with a purchase, an RPG, and a new shooter.(2) Now this is a retail victory!

2. Levelled up, but never level-headed,
AKA,
old JRPGs will make you insane.
Just today, over at Penny Arcade, Tycho and Gabe have both issued terrific defenses of the classical JRPG. This is a genre they've both (among many others) savaged in the past, but its appeals are strong for them, and for me. For me, turn-based party combat is just about as good as it gets in a video game, and when it's done right, it'll easily carry me through the many, many sins of the average JRPG. At least for a while.

And it would be hard to find a more average JRPG than Final Fantasy IV. I quit playing this game a while ago. A long while ago. Since I put it up, I have beaten two GBA RPGs, gotten halfway through two more GBA strategy RPGs, put 30 and 65 hours into two 'Cube RPGs, fallen in love with Metroid Prime, and started a torrid affair with the Dreamcast.(3) Never did finish the fucker, though I felt like I was pretty close...

Two nights ago, Canada comes downstairs to deliver some recently-burnt cartoons. He finds me engaged in the most rage-filled gaming session I've ever had. I unloaded on him my bile and contempt for confusing dungeons with battles Every Four Steps and the total annoyance of the Active Time Battle System.(4) At the time, I was seriously foaming at the mouth and anus: no battle system is fun Every Four Steps, particularly when you're having to backtrack all the god-damned time, due to a shitty map system.

Three hours later, I was 9 rooms into a 12-room dungeon with no save points, and I decided to take on a minor side-quest battle. Halfway through the battle, the bad guys somehow took command of my party. I then got to watch the game play itself, as my characters...slowly...got...killed...off. Three hours of time, totally wasted, because SquareEnix just couldn't make a handheld game with a workable save system. Right around here I made a note to myself:
I have never enjoyed a video game less.

The next day, I recognized that particular rage as my usual response to being inadequately leveled up. This is a "feature" of JRPGs that gets me Every Single Time. At least once in every such title, I beat a boss, they tell me about the next boss, so I take the game at its word and go find that boss. Then I proceed to have an incredibly frustrating play experience, because my characters are nowhere near ready for that part of the game.(5)

So I spent a couple hours yesterday and today happily running through the new-weapon dungeon and snooping around for other side quests: when the characters are well-matched to the environment, even the Active Time Battle System can be fun. Something has to be fun, here: I've got 40 hours in this game on this one playthrough, probably another 12 in the first two times I tried to play. Not that I can explain why I've played so much, exactly.

It can't be the story, which 1,000 internet nerds claim was a breakthrough in video-game narrative, because (a) I couldn't follow the thread when I was actually playing it, and (b) I gave the game up for so long that I had actually forgotten three separate members of my party.(6) The gameplay? Well, I can't actually remember any point at which I was really stoked to be playing this game. The music's pretty great.

All I can say is that a couple members of the supporting cast are really appealing to me. There's a guy who gets brought back to life by his wife. This is pretty neat. However, she pulls this off by whanging him on the dome with a frying pan. That's awesome. Cid is genius throughout the game: every single time he died, I felt genuine stirrings in my tiny, blackened little heart.(7) Palom is such a mouthy little twerp that his sister bitch-slaps him, which is fairly common in these games, but is still hilarious. And Kain has a really cool helmet. A really cool helmet.(8)

Which, apparently, is good for 40+ hours. Christ, I can't wait to be done with this stupid game. And never again will I play any Final Fantasy game without a good map by my side. Come to think of it, maybe I just won't play another Final Fantasy game.(9)

-Fat

(1)Curse you, Nintendo Power! You know I'm powerless to resist your miniguides! Such a cunning way to advertise...

(2)The opening text crawl is a nifty hard-boiled sort of science fiction. The middle paragraph of the main character's narration runs:

The Krill found earth sixty years ago, a humbling day for humanity. Their spaceships swarmed over the Atlantic. Gouged out a hunk of ocean floor the size of Canada. The sea boiled for three years, turning the sea life into gumbo. Melted ice caps and exposed mantle sludged into the hole like a wet rag. Good time to be a mapmaker.

That's nice stuff there. An added bonus is that the music is by Shin'en. The soundtrack for Iridion II is one of the finest game music achievements I've yet experienced, so I'm stoked for a bit more of their work.

(3)This is just to mention my involvement with comparable games. I shall pass over in silence the couple of action games and the several puzzle games I have involved myself with over that span.

(4)Combining the most irritating features of turn-based combat with the nagging insistance on your attention of real-time play! Thanks, SquareEnix! (Cockjockeys.)

(5)Frequently, I can actually prevail, due to my intensely awesome RPG playing. Seriously, nobody uses a healing spell, then a fire spell, then a couple physical attacks quite like me.

(6)I suspect that I cribbed the phrase "breakthrough in video game narrative" from GameSpot.

(7)And every time he came back, I felt like a chump for having been so easily manipulated by the dumb game.

(8)Seriously, the helmet is so cool I refuse to take the guy out of my party. I am in no way kidding. I even like the look of the helmet when he's in low-HP mode: his head looks exactly like Trumpy! TRUMPY!! "Trumpy, you can do stupid things!"

(9)Well, I do still have that copy of FFII to get through, and I've got maps for it, so.

Starriors! come out to play...

As I work on a piece about the most impressive and charming Drill Dozer, I become reminded of the first super-cool human-piloted giant robots what ever fascinated me. Starriors.





This toy line was a cousin of Zoids. I actually had a couple Zoids: the idea of a great big robotic dinosaur (with a little gold dude in a spacesuit sitting in the head) was pretty irrestistable. Building them yourself was equally nifty, particularly because the heads came off, and were very much like an escape-pod, starfighter kinda thingy, so when you got tired of giant-robot-dinosaur fun, you could fly the head around, shooting lasers at things.

This head-with-pilot functionality was also present in the Starriors, which I couldn't afford, but craved. Now, the idea of human-piloted giant robots was always in my head, near as I can remember. I mean, I don't really remember not being aware of Voltron, for example. But Voltron always struck me as basically lame. These guys, though, these guys I could see. Robot lion? Please. I want a giant chest-mounted buzzsaw, or twin-laser, or drill. I think it was this industrial, useful feel that first enthralled me about Starriors...





I have a very clear memory of being in the Wal-Mart toy aisle, holding the box with this guy in it. Would have been 84/85, looks like. This one was the one I wanted. I'm no longer convinced that a chest-mounted drill is all that functional, but I'll still take my chances. Except maybe against this guy.




-Fat

I love my dead grey console: part 1

As I mentioned earlier, I recently acquired a Dreamcast. I did this for no particular reason: I saw one at Goodwill, it was cherry, it was insanely cheap. I didn't know anything about it, I thought it might be cool. Initially, the purchase kicked my handheld gaming time right in the teeth. I'd just suffered a major setback in my Advance Wars II campaign, so those energies were easily canalized into my new toy.(1)

The second main effect of the Dreamcast was a serious pride of ownership. This wasn't a defensive posture, it's just that I'm thoroughly charmed by the little white box.(2) This seems not uncommon: there's the excellent Dreamcast Junkyard, there's this odd little page...(3) The Dreamcast seems to inspire an affectionate loyalty quite unlike the (hostile, incoherent, fanboyish) outpourings other consoles recieve. Couldn't tell you why. I'll say that when it starts looking around on those GDs, it's so goddamned loud that the machine seems like it's trying really hard to entertain me, and I can't help myself, I just start rooting for it.(4)

The third thing I had to do was find some games to play. I'm happy to use the console to play cds in mono through my tv's tiny, tinny speakers, but games just seemed appropriate. I've had luck with this process, and would now like to present a little Reviewiera feature:
how to build a dreamcast collection.

Step 1.
Get lucky and score a free copy of Soul Calibur. This game will flip your wig, making you realize that those Street Fighter days are over, because all that SF once did, SC does at least as well, adding a bunch besides. One title in, your Dreamcast has already fundamentally altered your gaming tastes! A twelve year long relationship with Street Fighter ended in like four hours of game play...

Step 2.
Pick up Rayman 2 for five bucks. Add it to your collection of high-rated 3d platformers you'll never play again, because the whole genre is foreign, inscrutable, baffling. Hello there, Super Mario 64 DS! Haven't seen you in a while...

Step 3.
Throw in a copy of Space Channel 5, for another lincoln. Every library needs a rhythm game, right? Later on, you'll discover that the rhythm game bit is just a cover story: really the game is an upskirt sim. A damn' fine upskirt sim. Speaking of cosplay porn...(5)

Step 4.
Now you'll want to do some research on the nets, figure out exactly what this Dreamcast thing is about. It's about Junkyards and Planets, mainly... Quickly score Armada, which will turn out to be not exactly what you were looking for. A simple scrolling shooter, or maybe, dare one dream, something a whole lot like Tie Fighter? Nope, a game a lot like Asteroids, where the flying is as hard as the shooting. But there's a lot of ship-customization in an RPG-like way, you'll get to this eventually. It'll justify its ten bucks, no fear.

Step 5.
Hit big with Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. (Another hamilton!) Spend a couple weeks playing this game a lot, even though you seriously suck. Solve block-moving puzzles! Solve platforming puzzles! Feel bad because you never finished Metroid Prime, which is better than this, even though this is really really good! Reave souls! REAVE SOULS! Give up eventually because there's a monster you can't figure out how to fight.

Step 6.
Watch the opening movie of Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Be wowed. Resolve to play the game sometime, if you can ever figure out how to play the stupid thing and its stupid stupid controls. Three disks for five dollars, shouldn't be hard to get some mileage out of this one.(6)

Step 7.
ZOMBIES! Ah, Zombie Revenge. Nobody understands you. Nobody really likes you, even. Well, Tycho from Penny Arcade is on record as liking you, and so am I. So your controls are a little sloppy; not every game needs to be ridiculously technique-filled. Sure, I love all that in my 2D side-scrollers, along with a nice sense of design, but the only place you get those anymore is on a handheld. On a bigger screen, I'll take some 3D action, nifty textures, well-done scurrying sewer rats, and, oh yeah: a shitload of zombies lining up for bullets in the brain. Looks great, sounds good, and there's all the zombies you could reasonably want to annihilate.

Step 8.
Back to the internet! Score a copy of Shenmue. Be totally into Shenmue. Be, if you will, all about Shenmue. Decide that all modern "sandbox" games with "urban" settings and "crime" stories are hacky ripoffs of Shenmue. Contemplate changing your name to Ryo Hazuki. Ponder Nintendogs, a game that obsessed you for a couple months, and marvel over the kitten in Shenmue, from years before. Get to the second disk, and wonder at the incredible realism of the warehouse district. The game really captures what it feels like to loiter in a warehouse district! Lose some momentum by butchering a couple of save routines. Hit a really annoying stealth mission and fail at it for a couple hours. Give up. Resolve to come back to this game: it'd be embarassing not to finish a title that's in your top 5 all-time.

Step 9.
Ecco! I'd read about this game a bunch. Consensus was: this game is pretty. Playing Soul Calibur, I'd already decided that the 'Cast level of graphics is as good as I'd ever need, so a verdict of "it's pretty", even from 7 years ago, is good enough for me. And five bucks? Yoink!

Sure enough, it's pretty. Beautiful, matter of fact. And there's no doubt about it, it's a game where you play as a dolphin. I mean, you're very much a dolphin in this game. After I'd played for an hour, I had the following exchange with Canada:
Fat: Man, this Ecco thing is cool. You're a dolphin, you swim around, there's a bunch of special moves that all pretty much just make you...frolic.
Canada: ...
Fat: ...I just recruited some other dolphins to help me rescue a baby whale from an underwater landslide.
Canada: What the fuck are you talking about?
Fat: This game, Ecco, Defender of the Future. You play as a dolphin!.
Canada: ...
Fat: Dreamcast game. Launch title.
Canada: Can't hardly see why the system failed, can you?
Fat: (while thinking "people like dolphins, though") I dunno, it seems pretty cool to me.
Canada: Can you breathe underwater?
Fat: ? What? No, of course not. You're a dolphin. You're a mammal, you have to surface to breathe.
Canada: That's lame.

Back downstairs, I began to muse on purchasing some weed, which surely would kick this game to the Next Level.

Or...skip the weed, run upstairs and raid the fridge for a can of whipped cream.

Mmm...nitrous...mammal...dolphin...frolic...

Step 10.
Crazy Taxi. Drop a fiver on a copy of this, beat up, though complete with booklet. Play this for most of an evening, realize you'll never get much better at it, understand that you've already gotten yr fiver's worth. Rejoice! --Between this and dotstream, you'll never need another racing game!

And that's how you build a Dreamcast collection!

(1)An amusing progression, two tex from DDT:
Dude. Advance Wars 2 is the shit! 17jul, 20:35.
Advance Wars 2 is rad. But evil. 21jul, a school night, 00.12. Shockingly late for DDT to be up!

Not long after recieving these tex, a customer of mine wasnted to see my copy of AW2 on his new DS Lite. While he was dicking around with it, I got distracted by the phone. I returned to him and noted the sickly look on his map: "what did you do, Tom?".

"Uh, I think...I think I just..." "Oh fuck no. You didn't just fucking wipe my save file. Fuck. You just wiped my fucking save file."

"Maybe it's still saved on your machine?"

"That's not how portable games work, Tom." Since I'm not totally stoked about replaying the first 20-some hours, I haven't picked up the cart since. I'll probably sell it.

(2)As opposed to my defensive pride in my Gamecube, for example. The customary take on this platform is that it's underpowered, the weakest machine of its generation, which simply wasn't the case. I dunno, maybe people are gentler with the 'Cast because they have fond memories of Sonic or whatever. Whatever, it's the only console that prods people to say things like "There was a lot of unrealized horsepower in the poor, star-crossed little Dreamcast, and it was hard to see it go." (Tycho, from the 2nd Penny Arcade book, p28.)

(3)This has to be a project in somebody's history of design class.

(4)Nobody needs to root for their Xbox, their Playstation. These machines were hits. Somehow the Dreamcast's career is...forlorn. Unloved by the world at large, forgotten by most, considered a failure if it's considered at all. Even a piece about interesting and influential industry failures mentions the 'Cast, without actually pointing out what was interesting or influential about it...

The short version of that answer would be, I think: the Dreamcast was the Xbox without a company able to lose huge money establishing it. Both consoles have libraries dominated by shooters, racing, and sports games, and both were well ahead of the curve in offering an online component. Unfortunately, Sega combined being too early with doing a crappy job on its online component, and had shallow pockets for marketing.

(5)Thank you, UK Resistance.

(6)The voice acting and intro movies in my meagre Dreamcast collection kick the hell out of their counterparts in my rather larger 'Cube library. This is probably just a result of Resident Evil having super-good movies, and LoK:SR having the best voice work I've ever heard in a game. The MDK2 intro is funny and stylish, two attributes few cutscenes ever feature. Just an odd fact.

Loyal solider, devoted companion, beloved VCR...

Back when, I was convinced for a year or two that I should be a filmmaker. With the wisdom of age and relative sobriety I am now reasonably confident that anytime some person says, "I want to be a ____," they will either:

(a) become "___," but be either mediocre or suck at it (the kind of person you say behind their back: "so-and-so should have stuck to being a [housepainter /dogwalker / jivetalker]), or;

(b) become "____," turn out to be really good at it, but make everyone sick to their stomachs because said person is one of those "success stories" we all hate, and they're probably independently weathly anyways, so the degree to which they truly "realized their dream" is questionable, since they clearly had a leg up on the rest of us shlubs in the first place. Ahem.¹

Back then, I was so terrible w/ money I never came even remotely close to being able to make the first step: buying a digital camcorder, which were expensive, back then. Times have moved on, & the other day I dropped the $400 to get a digicorder and necessary accessories, mainly for the purpose of digitizing some shit off old VHS tapes.

So I get home and decide to try and find some certain footage. These tapes are, in what seemed like a simple and clever strategy at the time, simple labeled #1, #2, #3, all the way of to #13. There are no other guide as to their content - leaving me with the joy and agony of watching them all one by one. So I throw a tape in the ol' VCR, watch about 5 seconds, realize I should just start with #1 instead, eject the one I'm watching, and put No. 1 in.

Then it happens.

You see, this isn't about the camcorder, or the old VHS collection...

My vcr, the ol' girl, just sort of IDLES DOWN, if you can imagine a vcr doing such a thing. I hit eject and the power button a couple times. More of the same. I panic a bit. Its kind of late and I have an invite to go to the neighbor's birthday party (including free keg!), so I give it a rest and head out.

Next day, I'm brushing my teeth and it hits me: is my vcr dying?

Fat may recall I had a similar scare about three years ago, and was prepared to take the fair lady out to a parking lot, stuff her full of fireworks, douse her in lighter fluid and give her a proper Viking funeral pyre. Then I just got a head-cleaner and she was okey-dokey.

But this is different. This problem sounded... mechanical.

For the record, I received this vcr as a Christmas present in 1995. Yeah, ELEVEN years ago. It was the cheapest vcr on the market at the time, and it still cost $90 (maybe $125, things were different then) - at K-Mart! 'Course, that high price tag, I'd like to think, even if it was the cheapest model, implied, y'know, some investment in parts and labor by the manufacturer, which is why it took 11 years before I was faced the prospect of getting new vcr (for what? $19.99?).

Still, I'm terribly upset by the prospect the ol' girl's given up the ghost. Eleven years! As far as things go, this vcr is antediluvian! I not sure what else I own could sit in that esteemed company. Probably some books. Maybe a CD or two. I think I have a board game or two kicking around that pre-date '95. Still, this detris of my youth, of this vintage, could probably fill two milk crates.

And let's not forget, a vcr, especially one you've owned for 11 years, signifies a lot of movie watching. There's probably not a single genre of film that I didn't start watching on that vcr. I had a tape once of about five episodes of the second season of Futurama that I taped off Fox with that VCR. I taped CGI cut-scenes from playstation games with that vcr!² I watched Battle Royale and Neon Genesis Evangelion and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Warriors and Return of the Night of the Living Dead and Zeram and "gray market" Godzilla flix and El Topo and god know what movies I'd seen a billion times before and over and over again on that sweetie.

The next day I get home from work, take the top cover off, kind of poke at the parts, and then, get this, I BLOW ON IT, as if some dust is the problem. And guess what? I hit power and the son of a bitch fires up, ready and rearin' to go!

That's my girl!!!

-d.d.

¹ Pardon the butting in of my views about the role of entitlement in this society of ours.
²Come to think about it, I still have that tape of CGI cutscenes (all of 'em from Legend of the Dragoon, then some other stuff. Maybe I'll digitize that!! Yreka!

As Fat's Giant Robot Week lingers on, slowly transforming into Fat's Giant Robot Month, I stumble over Chou Sou Juu Mecha MG on insert credit. It's a giant-robot-war game for the DS, apparently. Transforming giant robots! Fighting around the Eiffel Tower, no less. So, title that rolls off the tongue, possibility of trashing the Eiffel Tower, giant robots with multiple configurations. This one should be hard to fuck up.

The gameplay movie looks only okay, except for the super-rad control interface: on the touchscreen there's levers to move, switches to throw, and the like. If your character's got a giant bow, there's a bow-analogue on the touchscreen, where you've got to pull the string. If your character's got a spinning-blade attack, I suspect, there's a blade you'll have to spin on the touchscreen. Assuming these controls are analog, rather than digital, then this will be worth a strong look.

This title is apparently another step down a long-established manga/anime road: these games will serve to train the next generation of mech pilots, and there will be vast, lengthy tournaments to see who those pilots are likely to be.

As long as those tournaments aren't of Virtual On, at which DDT used to school me mercilessly, I expect I'll be fine.

-Fat

I will have...my...REVENGE!!

A couple years back, there blew up on the truth box the genre of robot wars. I was fairly into it, not for the product, but for the future. See, the wars were inevitably dominated by recent engineering-school grads, CalTech/MIT types who'd just gotten decent gigs and their own houses big enough to, y'know, build robots in their garages.

And who were these guys inevitably dominating? Midwestern hobbyists, mainly, of a sort I had thought long-disappeard. Popular Mechanics, Boy's Life kinds of Midwestern hobbyists. Usually it was a father-and-son combo, just a solid family, doing what families do: building remote-controlled minitanks with buzzsaw blades and sharpened stakes. At the end of the battle, you'd always get a priceless shot of the father and son, stunned, staring, holding each other up, their smoking ruin laying in the background while the victorious 'bot...yes, it's actually managing to strut somehow.

This brings me to the future. If I know anything from the comix I've read, it's that agonizing humiliation is the best motivation in the universe. See, right fucking now one of those children is fuming down in his basement, honing his plans, whetting his appetite for revenge and recognition, sharpening another buzzsaw blade, inventing gundaminum. Right now this second one of those boys is pioneering the next generation of doombots. He's transcending battery power and radio control, no doubt, and maxing out the number of hardpoints available for customization of his war machine.

Clearly, the kid will be too busy in the lab to pilot the damn' thing. This is where I come in. The prototype, the production model, whatever, I don't care. Just so I get my time at the controls, showing all the bastards, crushing all lesser foes, and so forth. I have, in this life, oft been wronged. I demand recompense. Only a giant robot can satisfy me.

This is a good start.

one-oh-oh-one uses, We got the juice to bruise the fuses!!

(continued from The Self-Actualization...)

1. Melo's rep is going to emerge from this in the best shape of its career. Its gonna be the one kicking the sand down at the beach, now, muthafuckas!

2. If Chris Paul's your main PG, then either Arenas has to be a 2 or he's backup and you cut Hinrich. But he's too good to be a backup and there are better 2s… Either way, Gilby got cut. Maybe. Whatever - one way or the other he's not on the squad anymore. He's a fave but I'm not really broken up about him not being on the squad. Why?

3. I'm still sticking with my earlier instinct that the "American" style of basketball lays in the trait of versatility, as in, if you assemble a squad of really good American players, whats their biggest strength? The answer to this inquiry is quintessential, as the coaching adage professes you play to your strengths.¹ Really good American players have many strengths. Hence, versatility.



4. The cutting of Gilby, however, has exposed the earlier hypothesis, that American basketball is Kevin Garnett, as FALSE. Garnett is not versatile. Garnett is a virtuoso. He is not merely a "really good ball player," he's a fucking goddamn demigod. Same with LeBron and Kobe. Can't tell for sure yet with Wade. Gilbert might be a late-bloomer half-diety. You might throw Amare in there too. And its not just their games that are quasi-Asgardian, its their gravitas. Put them on a team with at least 11 really good basketball players and they won't know what to do with themselves – Herculean feats are their soul's calling, and Hercules works alone. Seeing as LeBron & Wade are already on this edition of Team USA, and can easily play multiple positions (and given a lack of big men, LeBron's crucial since he can play some four), Gilbert had to go. Its like, Patton and MacArthur were never in the same combat theater for a reason, y'know?

5. Gilbert Arenas in a Patton tank helmet or in MacArthur aviator shades w/ a corncob pipe? Much ink could be spilled over this subject, so I will shelve the issue, for now.

6. Hey, waitaminute! If KG, Kobe, and LeBron are demigods, and Wade, Arenas, Amare are the sleeper unawakened, then how is it that Melo's the Dude on this U.S. Squad? Simple: while the blood celestial courses through the viens of the aforementioned larger-than-life players, transcending this hardwood coil, Carmelo Anthony is, simply, the World's Greatest Basketball Player .

-d.d

¹ My conviction in this adage, and its extension that the "True Way" of good basketball is a team that plays to its strengths (last years Suns were as pure of an example as we may ever see of this…) is deep. This belief apparently lay dormant in the subconscious for many years, until one night Fat and I were both talking about NBA Live teams we liked to run with (me: the crippled Blazers, the Redd-Mason Bucks, the Alston-Bosh Raptors; Fat: the Zarko Cabarkapa Warriors), and it occurred to us we had no interest in running with the, say, 85+ rated teams. Booooooring! For us, perhaps, apothesis of the game was made manifest in short-handed, under-talented team, taking what few strengths it had, and riding that mare into the ground, even if it meant using a committee of six players to generate the illusion of having a decent backup center.

Anyways, if you were to watch us running these teams over our shoulders, it'd probably be like watching the Suns' last year: "how are they winning? They play no defense, have no reliable outside shooting, and half of them can't rebound, pass, or shoot a free throw, yet they're winning division titles and making deep playoff runs." I hung up my coaching controller when I took last year's abysmal Trail Blazers to the Finals for a loss against the Pacers, then the Western Conference Finals for a loss against the Wolves, and final trip to the Finals to beat the Heat in six games after going down 0-2. I think in that playoff run there was a double OT game against Phoenix where the final score was in the high 80s or low 90s, with regulation FIVE MINUTE quarters! Defense? We don't need no stinking defense!!

"the color of a bleached skull, his flesh"

If my sci-fi leanings have a genetic Adam and Eve, then Adam would be Robert Heinlein's¹ Starship Troopers, which may be of no surprise. After all, whose skiffy roots aren't? Eve, however, is definitely Michael Moorcock's Elric books.²

Specifically, it’s the second volume in that saga, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, which I first purchased. I read the second book first because (a) the first book, Elric of Melniboné , was not in stock at the Waldenbooks at the mall of the mid-western town the Tinzeroes' clan was blowing through during the late '80s, and (b) of the available Elric books in stock, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate had the coolest cover.

Of greater significance, however, was that I went to Waldenbooks, and picked those two books out in the first place, because I was already in possession of the Avalon Hill board game versions of those skiffy stalwarts. I'm confident that Starship Troopers was the first to catch my eye at, strangely, the aforementioned mall's Kay-Bee. Additionally, chances are all the Avalon Hill products were on clearance, which explained my mother's willingness to buy them for me.

Like the other Avalon Hill games I came to own (1776, their RPG Powers & Perils, Squad Leader, Freedom in the Galaxy), I "played" Starship Troopers by myself 99% of the time, which mostly involved going through the elaborate starting game set-up procedures of putting a hundred-odd ¾" by ¾" pieces of card board ("chits") on a board divided up into hexagons.³ But man, by Arioch, that Starship Troopers game just straight-up nailed the translation of a sci-fi book into actual board game mechanics. Those boys in Baltimore at Avalon Hill were some mean board game mechanicists.

Since the game's design and mechanics were so completely derived from the text of the book, and included a handful of actual quotes from the book, and since the game and the rulebook so completely infatuated me, buying and reading (repeatedly) the book was not a big conceptual leap.⁴ The discovery of the Starship Troopers game led me to haphazardly pick out other Avalon Hill titles, of which one of the early ones was the ELRIC board-game.

Just like Troopers, the degree to which the game was absolutely and directly derived from the text of six, count'em, six books boggles the mind a bit.⁵ Hate to spoil it for you, but the sixth book, Stormbringer, ended with Elric unleashing the End of the World. This had the effect of ending the influence of the petty Gods, preventing them from meddling in the affairs of the universe ever again. Unbelievably, the board game incorporated this element.

Many other specific events from the books were in one way or another represented in the game, which was an odd way to design a board game, really.⁶ The number of sub-sets of rules which represent the various incidences from the books essentially dictated 'this is Michael Moorcock's world, and we're all just pushing chits around in it.'

-d.d.

P.S. See also, Moorcock's Miscellany.

¹Speaking of Heinlein, at the time of this writing, I am terminally stalled mid-way thru Heinlein's buddy E.E. "Doc" Smith's sixth & final book in the Lensman series, Children of the Lens. I mention this since Heinlein and Smith were friends, and Heinlein claims that once he asked Smith to help him buy a car. The two of them took the car for a test drive. Smith drove the car over unimproved roads at high speeds, with the two of them pressing their head against the roof of the car to see if they could hear deficiencies in the car.

²The appropriateness of genetically likening the Elric books to Eve and Starship Troopers to Adam is remarkable. To date, I have only read two other Heinlein books, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and, of course, Stranger in a Strange Land. Heinlein's Friday is still one of the few books I ever started that was so completely unreadable I just stopped after about 50 pages or so. This rather skimpy sampling of Heinlein's collected works makes the Elric books the metaphorical Eve, since I have read many of Moorcock's books. Seven Elric novels, Warlord of the Air, The Land Leviathan, The Dragon in the Sword (still one of the stranger created worlds I've ever read – and Hitler's in there, somehow), pseudo-historical-fantasy-fiction Gloriana, and, of course, his Nebula winner Behold the Man!, wherein Jesus Christ is a stranded time-traveler.
³The singular exception to this rule was the hands-down brilliant game The Mystic Wood, which I'm still pissed I don't have anymore…
⁴If this was the way, which seems really complicated now, that I became acquainted with sci-fi, and, indirectly, "adult" literature in general, then how the fuck do kids today make their introductions with the craft of reading, if its not spoon-fed to them via family or school? Certainly, my parents and my school(s) never handed me a copy of Heinlein or Smith, much less Moorcock.
⁵Credit where credits due: California-based Chaosism originally developed Elric, and I suspect many Avalon Hill's products were actually acquired from smaller companies. I find little fault with this since I highly doubt I would have ever found these games in a Kaybee in the middle of the American gulag if not for Avalon Hill. Salut!!
⁶ For example, Section 2.0 of the ELRIC rulebook read as follows:

THE WORLD OF ELRIC For 10,000 years the mighty Melnibonean Empire ruled the world. It was an inhuman race,. originally peaceful In their ancestra1 homeland of R'lin K'ren A'a. When the gods needed their city as a neutral meeting ground to create a lull in their cosmic strife, the ancient peoples were blessed with great powers and sent into the world. They found their way to the isle of Melnibone, mastered the dragons which lived there and began the building of their empire. Through sorcerous research and experimentation, the earliest emperors established mystical bonds and pacts with the gods and spirits of the planes. Armed with such knowledge and power they gained easy conquest of the known world. Thus secure, they settled into their long rulership; entertaining themselves with all known and several unknown experiences until their centuries filled with jaded dreams. Then the gods moved again, setting cosmic forces into motion. The Young Kingdoms arose, casting off the Melnibonean yoke. Once free, they squabbled about their petty human pursuits. The Melniboneans continued to decline. their dragons slept longer after each battle. and the race drifted into a deeper slumber, like that of the black lotus eaters. Then the Cosmic Balance grew more unstable as the struggle between Law and Chaos became more than philosophical discussion. Nations rose and fell, and ancient monsters and deities again stalked the world. This time of legend and dangerr demanded a new breed of person to confront the grave dangers. Thus began the age of heroes. There were many heroes in those days, but formost among them was Elric. Kinslayer, Red-handed Reaver , the White Wolf were among his names. His saga is powerful and bitter, the story of a man whose life was a curse and whose blessing was evil. EIric was the last of the Melnibonean emperors. As if to personify the decadence of the race, this emperor was born a weak, sickly albino able to remain alive only through the constant use of powerful magics and drugs produced by Melnibonean sorceries. Yet he was stirred to immense curiosity and intellectual vitality amid the slumbering race. This isolated him. He was known as a brooding and alien king by his own people. EIric sought and suffered from mighty magics. Through his knowledge and fate he came to find the mystical sword called Stormbringer. This ancient blade was a tool of the gods, for instead of merely taking the life of a person, it drew the very essence of their sours into its wicked being. Yet this power was useless without one to wield the weapon, and in return for Elric's hand upon the hilt the sword was bound to share its unholy energy with the emperor. Elric, needfu1 of such vitality; accepted the pact. Sword and man became slave to the other. None could tell the master. It was Elric's destiny to be tossed about by Fate and the gods, bandied like a toy, forced Into the most dangerous and foolhardy positions, suffering forever the doom of his sword. Thus he went forth into the Young Kingdoms.

Got all that?! Because there will be a quiz when the game is over!