Archive for the ‘Otaku’ Category

Krull

Wednesday, June 27th, 2012

I was 11 in 1983. At that age my mania for SF and Fantasy had long since developed and was strengthening day by day. This was constantly being fed by all manner of media, including books, games and television. But for a boy of that age, in that era, nothing seemed as important as motion pictures.

Everything was of course compared to Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. In the summer of 1983 a strange madness would have overcome me for months on end, since Return Of The Jedi was soon to be released and would be, undoubtedly, the most important movie ever. I’m not sure how I was able to sleep at night!

In waiting we occupy ourselves as best we can, so the years between Star Wars films had to be filled with other movies. The Dark Crystal had been one such film; Raiders Of The Lost Ark another and naturally I had absolutely loved both. My sci-fi/fantasy fandom was such that even ‘lesser’ files like Conan The Barbarian or unquestionable trash like Metalstorm: The Destruction Of Jared Sin were anticipated by young me with fervour. But from the moment I first saw the preview trailer one film jumped to the top of my ‘I can’t wait’ list, and made me positively giddy with anticipation.

That film was Krull.

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Something about this film hit a chord with me. It had lasers and spaceships but also monsters and magic! The hero wielded a crazy weapon and even the name of the film was powerful and mysterious! How could it not be amazing? I wanted to see it so badly, and in the months before it would be released I was always looking for information! As an 11-year old in Australia in 1983 though, my options were decidedly limited.

One day I went into a bookstore and discovered that my then-favourite author – Alan Dean Foster – had written a Krull novelization! I bought it (which means begged dad to buy it for me) and read it cover to cover immediately (spoilers be damned!). Oh, and it had pictures from the movie! I was in heaven.

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I recall being particularly enamoured of the ‘Glaive’ weapon. I expect this was also during my ‘ninja star’ period, and the only thing better to an 11-year old mind than a shuriken would of course be a bigger shuriken with spring loaded blades! I made one out of cardboard – I remember this very clearly – by cutting up a cereal box and gluing aluminium foil to the ends for the blades. It would have no doubt been a piece of garbage, but I bet I loved it.

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Marvel put out a comic adaptation of the movie. I couldn’t afford comics at that age – I expect my allowance was only about $2 per week or thereabouts (although we used to occasionally be able to buy books, most of which in my case were gamebooks or movie novelizations by my then-favourite author). But even though I didn’t buy the comic, I remember looking through one issue in the newsagent (I did this a lot) and completely spoiling a large section of the story. That I had of course already spoiled via the novel πŸ™‚

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The newsagent was a popular lurk of mine then. I used to save up and buy the game magazines from England, as well as the occasional issue of Smash Hits, but would just hang out in the newsagent (particularly the ones at Charlestown Square or Garden City) and read the Sci-Fi movie magazines from America. It was a bittersweet experience for a young fantasy-obsessed lad, since many of the (incredible looking to an 11 year old) featured movies would never see an Australian release. For those that did, these magazine articles were fuel for my burning anticipation!

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Eventually, after months of waiting, the movie came out in Australia in late 1983. I would have seen it with my brother and my dad, being too young to see a film unsupervised. Looking back on it now, I bet dad was bemused. I absolutely loved it!

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During the opening credits, the glaive flies across the screen and reveals the logo. As a child I would have found this to be unspeakably awesome, since I had ‘a thing’ for logos (I used to spend hours drawing them). The combination of an awesome weapon with an awesome logo! It was like they had a direct feed into my dreams!

So the film had been seen and had been loved. It was everything I had hoped for! I expect I read the novel again, probably through around my crappy homemade glaive, and even quoted the film in the playground: “Short in stature, tall in power, narrow of purpose and wide of vision!” For a brief period, Krull was the best movie ever made!

A scant few weeks later (48 days, to be precise) things would change, since Return Of The Jedi was released and my life (as a fan!) would rise to a new level.

The flame of Krull had burned only briefly in my heart, but it had burned brightly indeed!

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Last week I purchased the Krull DVD (for only $5) and we watched it again. This was KLS’s first time ever seeing the film, and my first time in almost 30 (thirty!) years. And I have to be honest: it holds up quite well.

A titanic flop when it was released, due mostly to a bloated budget, the film has surprisingly good special effects that still hold up today. Furthermore, the massive and impressive set design has barely been equalled, and the abstract interiors of the ‘Black Fortress’ are alien enough to not suffer from the sort of dated design common to many films from those days. Yes the story is weak, the villain has an anticlimatic ending and (let’s face it) the glaive weapon is criminally underused. But, most importantly, the film is still fun.

I’m in no way surprised that I had such an enthusiasm for this film back when I was a little sprout, and honestly look back on those days with an uncommon (for me) sweet nostalgia.

The Most Legendary Of Items

Sunday, June 17th, 2012

Over the years both VFD games and Game & Watches have featured several times on this blog. I have a nostalgic fascination for both types of handheld game since both were an important element of my early gaming years.

Since I have often joked about BS seeking out and buying me a VFD game, and have many times bored KLS with stories of long-lost Game & Watches, you can imagine my surprise – no, astonishment – when on a recent trip to Rochester, a long-forgotten box of stuff from KLS’s childhood was unearthed and yielded one of each. And now I proudly present the latest two additions to my collection of Legendary Items:

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As found, the game was dirty (even a bit sticky) and hadn’t been used in aeons. This is the 1983 Tandy version of a game manufactured by Tomy Japan in 1982, and was amongst the first wave of VFD games ever made (this predated Scramble). Over the years I’ve read quite a bit about these things (I even have a book on handhelds…) and knowing that the VFD displays are unreliable I had great concern that this guy wouldn’t work. So I started by cleaning it:

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Then plugging in a 6V AC power supply. No luck – nothing happened. Unlike seemingly everything manufactured these days, these games use ‘C’ batteries, and we had none in the house. So a trip to the store later, I trepidatously put the batteries in and…

It worked!

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The display, sound, controls. Everything works perfectly. I was elated!

This game seems to be quite rare today, possibly for reasons stated above. A brief search online found virtually none for sale, with the exception of one boxed example on ebay for $150. I’m going to treasure mine πŸ™‚

Mario’s Cement Factory

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Of the two, this one gave me the biggest start when I saw it. Nintendo manufactured 59 different Game & Watch games between 1980 and 1990 and four of them were also made in a special colour ‘tabletop’ model. Only two of those four were ever sold outside of Japan, and Mario’s Cement Factory was the rarest of the two. It’s always been floating around somewhere in my brain as an ‘item I’d love to have’ because many, many years ago I saw a few of these being sold at clearance at a K-Mart in Australia and I never bought one (shades of the story behind this, wouldn’t you say?).

At any rate I now had my own Mario’s Cement Factory! But it was very dirty, especially the screen and the LCD panel. But I had high hopes for this guy, since the solid-state technology in Game & Watches is very robust (they can survive going through washing machines, for instance) and the mirror and panels in this example were intact. So once again, I sat down and gave it a careful and thorough cleaning!

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The technology is simple but clever. You play by looking at the reflection in a mirror of an LCD mounted (in reverse) just under the white transparent plastic panel on the top. Light passes through this panel (and through the LCD) and is reflected off the mirror. Images are formed via the LCD blocking light and a plastic coloured film which makes the LCD itself appear coloured. Back in 1983 when this game out the technology seemed magical, since every other Game & Watch was black and white. Even today it is a very impressive bit of trickery created by Nintendo many years before actual colour LCDs became a reality.

Oh, and it works! Here’s a shot of the full LCD panel after I put the batteries in:

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Click on it and have a look at it in high resolution. You can see the ‘bleeding’ of the colour at the edges of the film, which would be due mostly to optical (refractive) events. They are tiny enough to not be visible when solid lines separate the elements (such as the concrete tanks) but easily visible on the Mario ‘sprites’. I wonder if the 11-year-old me would have noticed this if I got this back in 1983?

Here’s a video of the gameplay:

And a photo:

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This is a real treasure! It cleaned up beautifully, is in near-mint condition, and works perfectly. It will occupy a place of great pride in my collection! Since I knew these were pretty rare (one source I checked estimated only about 30k were made for export) I checked the prices online. I couldn’t find any boxed examples, but there are a few on ebay that seem to be in worse shape than mine going for $130+. The Game & Watch name really helps, but it’s amazing how these things have gained value isn’t it?

I feel as if I have out-legendaried any other possible additions to my collection in obtaining these two. Could this be the last ever ‘legendary item’ post? Time will tell πŸ™‚

(Haiku) Review of SW:TNG/DW|A2

Thursday, June 14th, 2012

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“I thought I’d hate it.
Surprisingly I didn’t.
I’ll buy the next one.”

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Legendary Item 2

Monday, May 28th, 2012

The other day I obtained my 259th Nintendo DS game. And it was no normal game, good readers, it was in fact… this:

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Yes fellows, I now own the second in the Club Nintendo exclusive Game & Watch Collection series (I barely need mention I already own the first in the series)!

What is this game – which I remind you is unavailable in stores – you ask? It is none other than Parachute and Octopus coded for the DS. Here is an image showing both games in action:

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Remarkable, wouldn’t you say? But it doesn’t stop there! No, my friends, this humble DS cartridge also contains the brand new remix game Parachute x Octopus which is an unholy combination of both (let’s ignore for the moment reviews that say it’s terrible).

So where did I obtain this? Club Nintendo of course! It cost 800 ‘coins’, which are obtained by registering games and hardware. 800 coins equals about 16 Wii games, about 27 DS games, or about 5 hardware systems (DS, Wii, 3DS etc.). I’m proud to say I now own all three actual packaged games Nintendo has made available through the system (for which I spent a total of 2800 coins!)

Time for an honest disclosure: I haven’t yet played this. In fact I haven’t removed the shrinkwrap. But I love it nonetheless πŸ™‚

Diablo 3

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012

Last week, Diablo 3 came out. I flitted over to the store on the morning of release and bought myself a copy.

As some of you know, I was a mad fan of Diablo and Diablo 2. Both were pretty roguelikes, which has always been one of my favourite genres. The latter in particular I played for oodles of hours, ending up with a level 96 sorceress, a level 9X amazon and a few other characters. This was no small feat, since levelling became torturously slow at high levels. I also had awesome gear, and had beat the highest difficulty many times over. What a game!

So my anticipation for Diablo 3 was high, to say the least. It was with great excitement I created my first character, Momomo:

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Ok, she’s already level 41 in that screenshot! I did say the game came out a week ago surely?

I blasted through the normal difficulty quite quickly, finding it fast-paced and (frankly) quite easy. It probably took me about 16 hours to get to and kill the final boss:

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That’s his loot in the above screenshot. A nice haul, wouldn’t you say?

Anyway Diablo games have never been about beating normal mode, they are about playing through multiple times at progressively higher difficulties, in which both the challenge and the rewards increase. Diablo 3 has 4 such difficulties (Normal, Nightmare, Hell, Inferno) and right now I’m half way through Nightmare mode. The going has gotten harder, but still not the level I’m anticipating!

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This game is fun! It’s like ‘Gauntlet’ on overdrive, more arcadey and prettier than old Diablo, without sacrificing (yet, at least) any of the addictive qualities. It’s easy to lose hours just running around killing massive packs of monsters and sorting through the loot looking for upgrades.

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The above shot shows that the game hasn’t abandoned character complexity, although I’m starting to suspect that amidst all those stats only two actual matter (DPS and HP). Character skills (of which there are dozens) are awarded automatically and cannot be upgraded via skill points like in D2. This means the five character classes are more homogenized within each other (for instance, in D2 the sorceress class alone had 3 or 4 viable ‘builds’ that were so different they felt like different characters), which is probably a change that was made in the interest of game balance. It remains to be seen how many of my skills will be viable at the level cap.

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There’s Momo and Stefka (SFL) playing together! Diablo 3 is an online-only game, and obviously supports co-operative multiplay, which is handled very well with little noticeable latency or syncing problems. There are some issues however, especially that multiplay games are not really fun for either party when there are large level discrepancies between the players. But I suspect this is a short-term problem, since eventually everyone will hit the level cap (60) and farm Inferno together.

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My biggest concern for the game at this point is with regards to longevity. It will take about 50 hours to get Momo to level 60. But how long will the game hold my interest then? The true appeal of Diablo 2 was farming for gear, and there was a mind-boggling variety available. I’m not yet convinced Diablo 3 has this variety and gear appeal (in fact I’m almost convinced it doesn’t), and the many words written on this exact topic in the last week by passionate Diablo veterans carry more than a grain of truth in my opinion. In addition, if the gear is not there then the draw for level capping additional characters is diminished as well (since it feels pointless).

But Blizzard is a smart company, with a lot invested in this game. At the very least, without a monthly fee their plan is to make money via a ‘Real Money Auction House’ (exactly what it sounds). This can only succeed if the items sold on the RMAH (gear) are attractive enough for people to buy. Therefore I think we’ll see some significant adjustments/additions to the gear in the game before too long.

But, as I said, that’s in the future. Right now I’m only lvl 43, and have a lot of playing ahead of me before I hit Inferno difficulty. And I’m still having a blast doing just that πŸ™‚