autumn tactics

It’s no small secret that I have a considerable game backlog to get through, mainly a score of unfinished RPGs. For some, this is deserving, but others, it borders or sacrilege.

After getting home from the annual company review and workshop, I was pretty tired and was craving a little light media before an early bedtime. But my laptop wasn’t connected, and I didn’t feel like screwing with wires so I decided to play a game. At first I tried Star Ocean 3, but unfortunately with successive titles Tri-Ace seems to improve only on pissing me off more. The things that were frustrating in Star Ocean 2 are only more so with Till the End of Time. The dialogue is sickening, the voice acting an insult, and the mildly satisfying battle system is drowned out in a deluge of pointless cutscenes that just drag on and on and on. If the game ends up taking seventy hours to clear, it’s only because over 40% of it is spent waiting for the next poorly textured character to deliver a delayed response to some vapid one-liner. I don’t like quitting on games, but Tri-Ace has pushed me too far, and SO3 is now on moratorium for being unbearable.

Still, I decided I had too much time on my hands in cold, gloomy weather. So next I tried Code Veronica for another hour or two before realizing I was wasting my life playing a B game for the third time. Then I started fussing with Midnight Club 2 (which I helped develop), since I still haven’t cleared it. However, the difficulty and the frothy nostalgia from playing through the Paris level were too much. I guess I wanted a game that was mildly challenging and devoid of sentimental attachment, but most of all one which didn’t require a lot of patience.

So ultimately I decided to give Ico another try; despite having gotten stuck at in the first room of the game when last I tried it two years ago. Fortunately, this time was a lot smoother, and now I’m about four hours on, climbing through the middle of a very nice surrealist painting. Ico was on the ETC “suggested games list” six years ago, but I’m very slow to adopt new technology. I got the PS2 in 2004, and now three years later am just catching up to all those dust-collecting DVDs.

Ico has stirred up a lot of soft, pastel fantasy and I’m having a hard time putting it down. But I don’t think I can stay on the couch all weekend; autumn weather grows its own kind of spongy idealism that’s hard to ignore.

Living in Japan, I don’t get to communicate with my family often, much less see them. I often wish I could, especially my brother. We’re probably about as typical as brothers come, doing all the things brothers do: hanging out a lot, getting along well, not getting along well (pretty much always my fault), and having a lot of common interests. From James Bond to Nintendo, Jackie Chan to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, we started stuff side-by-side and finished things side-by-side. My brother is probably more like me than anyone on the planet, but also more different. I don’t know what brothers are really supposed to be like, but I know I wish we could do almost everything together. He’s probably the last person I still truly believe to have some kind of special link with, or at least romanticize to. If only we lived in the same town, there’s so much we could accomplish, so many monoliths we could build.

But we live apart, and live vicariously through each other. I make the games he always talked about, he makes the music I always did. When I was in high school I got my mother to buy me a guitar and pay for lessons, just like I had her buy me a trumpet and pay for lessons when I was in middle school. But at fifteen I wasn’t obsessive about anything other than D&D and Mountain Dew, so it ended up being the “I told you so” that depresses every parent.

But Tony is the opposite. He tinkers with guitars like I do Photoshop. He goes over the basics and imitates the masters, from dusk to dawn he works at it. He applies himself, he’s serious about it, and he dreams of having the kind of music he wants to make respected. Most of all he probably just dreams of finding some people as dedicated to it as he is, which is always hard in open society.

My brother is a lead guitarist, bassist, singer, and writer. His music is genuinely good, and even more exciting than his productions now are those he’s going to be making once he has the luck to find some mature people to respect what he’s trying to do.

The Scene East rocks. My brother rocks.

This week while having a very long discussion with my boss about myself, he noted that “the smartest people are the dumbest people.” Essentially what he meant was the more you know that you really know nothing, the wiser you are.

I can’t even pretend to think that I know a good amount about anything. I am constantly aware that there are uncounted thousands of pieces of media which I would really enjoy and probably benefit from. The sad reality is that even if I hear a lot of hype about one in particular, I probably won’t try it for some time because I spend my precious time focusing so intently on things I already know will pay off immediately. But, when enough people tell me enough times, I may eventually look into it. This blog is the best example.

Guitar Hero has been on the radar for a couple years now. It’s apparently a glorified version of Guitar Freaks, with better marketing and execution. Still, I’m kind of stubborn and for the longest time I just kind of skimmed past the headlines. However, I finally had an easy chance to try it since our boss brought back a copy from the States this week. So late last night after nearly everyone had gone home I poked my head into the meeting room and gave it a try.

I see why it’s sold over two million copies.

The first time I picked up the controller I tried “Message in a Bottle” on easy and got a 94% hit rate on the notes. When I started the song, I was tense and my fingers were shaking. People were watching and I was nervous about messing up. But by the end of the song I was physically unable to resist the urge to sway back and forth, pulling up on the neck to finish off riffs. I’m a bit of an addict when it comes to rhythm games, and Guitar Hero just became my new crack.

After it got really late and everyone went home, I went back into the meeting room and tried “Message…” again on medium. The increase in difficulty was staggering, but I suppose the general progression is to clear most of the songs on easy and get comfortable with the note patterns and then start on the simpler medium difficulty songs.

But The Police are cool, and I wanted to devour “Message in a Bottle.”

So I tried it over and over, figuring out the riffs and practicing sliding down the neck. I got about 50% cleared, and after about forty minutes my hands were starting to get tired so I called it a night.

But during the ride home, I listened to “Message…” over and over on the iPod; I had to figure out bassline. Laying in bed before going to sleep, I found myself practicing the fingering, working those transitions over and over in my mind. Man, I got it bad, and I’m afraid there’s no cure.

It’ll be a miracle if I last a week without ordering an import copy.

I’m pleased to announce (more than you know) that yesterday marked the released of F-Zero: Falcon Densetsu (Legend of Falcon) to gaming enthusiasts nationwide. This title is of particular interest to us as it features voiceover work done entirely by me. Though I have done voiceovers for other games in the past, none of them were of the mass-commercial release variety, so needless to say I’m quite charged to have had a chance to do something I’ve always loved (using my voice and personality to entertain) on a scale of hundreds of thousands of people.

I recorded over 150 discrete things to say, but as is common in our industry, size limitations saw roughly 30% of the material make it into the tiny Game Boy cartridge. However, there are plenty of times you may hear me say “Choose your car!” or “3 laps to go…”. Those exceptionally familiar with my voiceover history may notice a “GOOOOAAALLL!!!” reminiscent of the Spanish-localized version of Dance Dance Anubis 2.

Anyway, please go out and buy it if you like racers. (US release is mid Jan-Feb next year.) I don’t receive any royalties other than deriving pleasure from the fact you can now hear me say “Congratulations!” any time you wish. It was great to be a part of a game series my brother and I have appreciated for a long time, to say nothing of working with Nintendo. Look for me in the manual and credits (if you can beat it), I appear with a number of aliases so you’re sure to know me.

Here’s a couple in-game movies in which you can hear my work, as well as the TV spot.

Have you played Star Ocean 2? Aside from the ever-annoying “.. … ….” bubbles (further reinforcing how Japanese derive satisfaction through enduring mindless repetition), it’s a pretty good game. I think. I’ve been told. I got maybe 40 minutes in, but haven’t played it in many months as I made the oh-so-common zealous gamer/romantic mistake of naming the heroine after my then-girlfriend.

I want to write. A lot. Everyday. I want to write so much the frustration of not writing joins the frothing river of anguish I carry from my work and deteriorating health. More precisely, I am unable to write because my nights are as much pain as the laborious days. I can’t recall a day when I didn’t wake up feeling nauseated and about to throw up from fatigue. My memory is failing me, and I can’t concentrate on anything for more than ten minutes at a time. I’m going to a clinic next week to beg mercy and help with my rapidly dissolving grip on sanity. The amount of things I want (and know I can with normal health) to do is increasing asymptotically to my careening grip on basic life maintenance. If you know me, pray for me. I need it.