FORT90

- So after three long years, I have finally been reunited with Guardian Heroes and Burning Rangers, two beloved Saturn games which I had to part ways with when I was dealing with heavy financial hardships.

The summer of 2002 was an extremely rough one for me. I was pretty much unemployed the entire year, having lost my job the previous fall when Ubi Soft closed its New York doors. Then when 9/11 happened just a few weeks later, I found myself struggling to find gainful employment among many others in the resulting economic crisis that hit the city particularly hard. I did have unemployment insurance, but it wasn’t much. Even with money coming from freelance writing jobs via Nick Mag which I had just began writing for, my cash flow was still tight. Each and every morning was dedicated towards scanning jobs sites and sending off resumes, though I almost never getting a response. In fact, of the literally hundreds of enquires I made, I think I got like three replies.

… Though I did get job offers, good ones, from across the country. Acclaim offered me a sweet head creative post in their Austin studio, where I would have been making close to a hundred grand. But I just didn’t want to move to Texas…. and its a good thing I passed since they went on to do that horrible BMX XXX game which pretty much tarnished the reputations of most of the folks involved…

On the plus side, the lack of a day job freed up much time, which allowed me to get in plenty of gaming those days, the most since my carefree days in high school actually. And despite the lack of expendable income, I still hunted for games, though I had to be a lot more frugal about things. At one point when I had a little cash lying around, and a lot of curiosity to kill, I finally got myself a 32X along with all the games that had been a source of constant temptation for years (all four of them). Alongside Virtua Racing Deluxe (good, but just didn’t have the same impact as the the brilliant Genesis conversion), Tempo (neat little game…. I just realized that I’ve barely touched the Japanese only Saturn sequel), and Knuckles Chaotix (fucking horrible game, but a sweet Sonic soundtrack) was the one game which I had dying to play…. not only the greatest hummingbird-based shooter ever made, but the only one ever made: Kolibri.

What else can be said other than you’re basically a hummingbird that shoot bugs and drinks pollen from flowers? Its from the same folks who did Ecco Dolphin, and much like that game, its very beautiful looking (especially for a Genesis game) and fun to play, but sometimes tough since you usually don’t know what the fuck is going on. But more than that, its representative of the creative risks Sega was willing to take at the time. That and of how desperate they were to have games on their systems.

Another game that’s brilliant in concept, but which unfortunately never made it is Virtua Hamster. To learn more about the hamster on a skateboard, simply go here.

Anyway, as fun as it was to have so much time for playing games and all, my money situation simply grew worse and worse. So eventually I had to resort to selling bits and pieces of my game collection online. The problem was, money was tight for everyone so the prices one got on almost anything was far lower than usual, but when you’re poor, you have to deal. I guess the best (or worst example) was my Super NES set. Included were…

Super NES – model 2
Super Mario World
Yoshi?s Island
Super Mario All Stars
Super Mario RPG
Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Super Metroid
Starfox
Super Punch Out
Kirby?s Dreamland 3
Earthbound
Tetris Attack
Castlevania 4
TMNT 4
Mega Man X
Super Ghouls and Ghosts
Super Street Fighter 2
U.N. Squadron
Rockman & Forte (plus converter)

Each and every game was mint (I take care of my shit) and practically brand new. Actually, every game was new when I purchased them, and in many instances, such as Earthbound, it was the very last new copy in all of New York City at the time (this is around 1999-2001ish). And what did I get for all of this stuff? $80 fucking dollars. This still haunts me to this day… one recurring dream I have involves a constant, never ending search for my missing SNES games. Sad I know.

During that summer, Dave invited me to come to California to hang out with his family, as well as hit the San Diego Comic Con and assorted amusement parks (he actually got me a ticket to Disneyland for my birthday earlier that year). So I was super psyched to finally be able to hit all the spots that I had long wanted to (my folks never let me go to Disneyland as a kid, and it fucked me up something fierce), but the idea of having little to zero spending money was not at all appealing. So to make sure that I wouldn’t have to worry while on vacation, I made the very tough decision to sell one a most precious Saturn game: the now legendary Treasure shooter, Radiant Silvergun. And I only got $200 for such a highly sought after title (which normally fetches easily $500). At least it made my California trip stress-free.

But as the fall approached, and the number of unemployment checks on the way began to seriously dwindle, I had to dig deeper. Dave offered to help by buying some other Saturn games off of me: Guardian Heroes, Christmas NiGHTS, Mega Man X4, Burning Rangers, and another game which I forget. Either because he’s such a good friend or I just needed the money badly, plus right then and there, I gave him the lot for an insanely low price (something like $60 or something). Later as things turned around, I was able to replace my copies, with the exception being Guardian Heroes and Burning Rangers since they still fetch primo cash online. Thankfully, in Dave’s eyes, the cash he forked over wasn’t to buy the games per say, simply to rent them out for an extended period of time.

So now I have them back, safe at home. Plus the timing is perfect…. a student of mine is working on a game that has a somewhat similar tone to Guardian Heroes so I figured that it would be beneficial to take a look at it.

And on a somewhat related note, I came across a site via the IC boards which has a ton of game music available for download. I won’t give away the URL here since I’m so afraid of two much attention raping its bandwidth, but if you know where to look, you’ll find it. Anyway, thanks to the resource, I finally have the soundtrack to Mega Man X4, which easily has the best Mega Man music since the NES days of 1-3. It’s very Transformers the Movie-like.

- As for gaming news, I’ve been pretty behind due to work and all, but I can tell you that today marks the 20th anniversary of the Nintendo Entertainment System! It shipped on October 18, 1985 to stores across America!

- I really didn’t think there would be much more to say about Jack Thompson, at least by this point. Following up on his idiotic offer to donate $10,000 towards a charity for a game idea of his, which was nothing more than a thinly-veiled death threat, was the head of National Institute on Media & Family publicly distancing themselves from the guy. Which had led him to go totally ape-shit, resulting in angry letters to every single media outlet that’s reported the story in an effort to correct them that he is indeed not insande, as well as calls for help to his buddy Senator Lieberman. And I’m sure everyone by now knows about the email/phone exchanges between the crackpot lawyer and the guys from Penny Arcade, also from this past Friday.

Well it seems that someone took up on Thompson’s suggestion, but he apparently didn’t like it, and said that the financial offer was “satire”, so the Penny Arcade folks decided to donate $10,000 of their own towards charity. And now it seems as if Thompson has called upon the Seattle police department to get them arrested!

- Here’s some more old news (at least if you haven’t seen my news updates at Insert Credit): those who pre-order My My Katamari (the PSP version of the game) will receive a very nifty bonus: a PSP carrying pouch shaped just like the prince’s head!

- And a while back I mentioned a site that listed every single movie reference to come up in a video game. Well here’s the same thing, but in reverse: a resource that lists almost every single appearance of an arcade game in an American movie over the past thirty+ years.

- Joe passed this one along: some say that the reason Mario is so popular is because he’s basically an every-man, someone that most anyone can identity with. Well now that’s officially a fact. Check out 64 Marios:

My fave has to be either Devo Mario or Hasidic Mario.

- So EA recently signed up Steven Spielberg to produce games for them. I wonder if it’ll employ some of the technology that he says that he’s invented which more or less sounds like the holo-dek from Star Trek: TNG.

This isn’t the first time he’s flirted with video games btw (the Dig comes to mind). But those hoping for him to be hands on the video game process might be disappointed. This might be just another thing he slaps his name on. Those who feel otherwise probably still thinks he had something to do with Tiny Toons.

- Also from last week is this interview with the men behind Shadow of the Colossus (a game which I am so excited for… I haven’t been this amped before a game’s release in a long whiles) in which they spill the beans behind Ico’s ending.

- For those who missed it: for a while it was rumored that Dead or Alive 4 would feature a character from the Halo universe. Most assumed it was going to be the series protagonist or the holo-chick Cortana for obvious reasons (you know, boobies). But it turns out that its going to be a female under the Master Chief armor, which is basically the best of both worlds, and cements many people’s assertion that Team Ninja are geniuses.

- Time for some game-related music videos. First up a rap vid which sports some Mike Tyson’s Punch Out references, as well as some decent animation (can’t talk much about the song itself… then again, I’m not fan of rap these days).

Next is a vid produced by G4 for its Cinematech program, which is pretty much the only decent thing they show at this point. Its some song with footage from some wacky PSone game that features construction equipment. A pre-quel to Buchigire Kongou.

- And here’s a 30 minute movie that’s “intended to give gamers the movie they deserved”. You’ve heard of the Wizard, but what about The Master?

Hey, at least its better then any of Uwe Boll’s movies.

- Ben Heck, master custom portable console creator extraordinaire is at it again, with NES Micro:

- Oh, and in case you didn’t know and needed to be reminded: video gamers + LiveJournal = hilarity.

- Finally, I just found out that James Jean, a friend of mine from SVA, as well as a super talented talent from the world of comics, is attached with an upcoming animated series based upon Castlevania! James is designing the show, Warren Ellis is handling the writing, and the whole thing’ll be based upon the third game in the series, Dracula’s Curse, easily the most underrated game in the series.

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I have to admit, this year’s DigitalLife was much stronger than the last, at least the gaming component of the show. But it still sucked. And like year’s, the turnout was massive (it was more so according to some), so the show was still a success at the end of the day, proving yet again that New Yorkers truly are starved for the kind of technotainment events which folks on California get on a regular basis. Hence why so many people seemed to have no problems paying $15 or some other insane price just demo a bunch of games that are more or less already out.

But hey, at least there were more games this time, thanks to there being more than just three companies on-hand. This time there was maybe six, I think. Among the stuff I played, as well as other highlights…

- Sega had a presence, which was certainly welcoming. I got to give Sonic Riders, the new Sonic themed racing game, this time featuring hover boards, is actually not that bad! Its basically Sonic + SSX + F-Zero Lite. I found the controls hard to deal with, but then again, I’m a guy who can’t control any snowboarding game, even SSX, so don’t take that as anything. Its feels like the best parts of Sonic Adventure 2; you know, the full on running towards the screen with occasional camera trickery.

Also tried out Phantasy Star Universe for a bit, which I’ve had my eye on since day one, being a big fan of the series during its Genesis heyday and all. As expected, its plays sorta like Phantasy Star Online, but starring cool club kids. Its hard to judge any action-RPG from just a few minutes of straightforward action without the context, so I’ll just say it looked very nice.

- Microsoft entire whole presence was a total joke. Was there any Xbox 360 games playable? Of course not, why should there be? The system is only two months away. Instead they just had a video showing off the system itself and all the accessories. There was about a dozen or so folks watching it at any given time, and each group was almost all confused as to what was what, and if they needed it, as well as what coming in the whichever package. Plus they had vids from upcoming games, including the misleading GRAW vid from E3 which was recently revealed to be only “target renders”.

There were some Xbox 1 games on-hand. You know, the system that MS plans on dropping like a hot potato when 360 comes out, even though its currently the second biggest home console in the world, and could continue to be so, but MS doesn’t apparently want that (just like how Sega dropped support for the Genesis about ten years ago). Anyway, I played a bit of Half-Life 2 port. All I can say is 15 fps. No joke.

- Got the chance to play Guitar Hero, which is a rhythm game where you “play” music via a guitar-shaped controller. It was pretty awesome despite the fact that I really sucked ass at it (which is no surprise since I can’t play the real thing for shit either…. it really sorta is like the real thing). Even better was watching some old rocker dude, the kind who you know has never touched a “modern” video game jamming like a guitar-God.

- Finally checked out GameTap, the subscription-based game service which allows you to plays tons of classic games from the arcade, consoles, and the PC. Only a few games were onhand… gave Hydo Thunder, which was the Dreamcast port a few minutes, but once I grew bored of the show, I came back to play Gunstar Heroes for a short while.

- The original plan was to attend the show in the early afternoon along with the rest of the press, but as you might recall, I got held up at SVA. So by the time I arrived, the doors were open for the general public. But I soon discovered that there were hardly any press the whole day; seems that the minute after Peter Moore’s keynote speech in the morning, everyone left. And along with the shitty weather, plus the fact that since it was Ziff Davis running the show, very few folks from non-ZD gaming mags bothered, meant that many were quite excited to see anyone with a press badge; when I ran into Michael Meyers, who was manning the SNK booth, I was only the sixth press guy he had seen in six hours the show was underway. Michael’s a super swell guy btw, as anyone who deals with video game public relations can attest, and it was just nice to have a chance to just chat with him.

- As I had expected (and feared), teenage girl bloggers are the new booth babes. Except that at least booth babes are paid for what for hawking whatever website or game.

I spoke to a few, too see if they were getting a fair deal or were simply being taken advantage of. I started with general questions about the show and how they felt about being a part of it all. All were totally psyched to have been asked by whichever major entity (one that they greatly respect and adore, of course… I guess I sorta have to keep everything vague since these are 14 year old girls I’m talking about) to represent them. Most had never been to E3 or any other kind of trade event, so it was all pretty overwhelming. But as I asked for details, the truth began to surface… Those where were out of town were supplied with airfare, which I was happy to hear. As for accommodations, they all got hotel rooms, but many seemed completely packed in; one said she was sharing a room with six other girls. But my jaw nearly dropped when one girl mentioned the extremely meager food expense. $10 is not going to get you far food-wise in Manhattan as is, but the Jacob Javits Center is in the middle of nowhere, with no food real food options anywhere aside from the snack bar located inside, and one hot dog alone is literally $7. Most confessed that they were already exhausted and it was only day, so they were not happy to hear that the next two days would have literally thousands more visitors which they will have to meet and greet. And sorry, but a sprinkling of free video games and shwag (basically shit lying around an editor’s office collecting dust) isn’t nearly enough compensation for all the work and energy they will have put in when all is said and done.

And yet the girls were still happy to be part of the show. All that hard work to cash in on some internet glory….

- On a related note, perhaps the dumbest thing I saw at the show were two folks who went ape-shit when they recognized a 1UP blogger (some stereotypical hot asian chick-type who reeked of the rather forced “grrrrl gamer” ‘tude that’s common with G4′s personalities) and asked to have a photo taken with her. Once again, I can understand people getting excited and wanting an autograph from an actor or musician or athlete, but a video game blogger? Am I the only who sees how fucking ridiculous that is?

- Back to booth babes, I finally had my first exchange with one. There was some woman dressed like an EverQuest character giving out autographed pictures so I decided to get one for Steve (him being the biggest online game I know and all). When I made my request, she looked at me and looked down at my badge, and when she realized that the two were not the same, she had that look of “wow… this guy isn’t lying!”

Oh, in case anyone’s is interested…

- Nintendo fans have the stereoype of being the most annoying, blindingly retarded fanboys out there, and the show certainly validated this. There was about six or so DSs at the Nintendo section, each featuring a highly anticipated game which would have been anyone highlight had they had a chance to play them. Unfortunately, each time I stopped by, it was the same gang of fucktards that were hogging the seats…. not to play Mario & Luigi 2 or Animal Crossing DS…. they were all trying to play a multi-player game of Mario Kart via the one DS cart that was in a demo unit. And of course, this didn’t work, so instead of turning the games back on, they just sat there bitching. After a while, the teenage girls manning the booth tried to get back some control, but the gang wouldn’t relinquish their seats. No one involved weas older than 16 btw. It was a fucking mess and after a while, I just sick of it all and gave up.

- Speaking of the girls running the Nintendo show, it was members of PMS, an all girl gamer “clan”. When I noted how curious it was that they were representing Nintendo, given how hard they maintain a rather non-offensive image, and how they only really align themselves with like entities, I was informed that PMS no longer refers to “Psychotic Man Slayers” they know go as the far less offensive “Phoenix Magical…” something something.

- So what game was got the heaviest push? Without a doubt, Star Wars Battlefront 2. Its funny how ill-informed the mainstream press was because they totally bought the hype hook, line, and sinker later that even by starting that it was “the most anticipated game this whole year!” Its amazing…. if you say anything on a banner, some people will believe it, no matter what.

- There was plenty of gimmicky, bizarro game tech from who the hell knows, with the same full body gaming, VR-lite that you see every year, but this time around it looked a helluva lot more polished and refined. One “your actually controlling all the movements in a fighting game!” game was actually pretty damn nice. Though the full body Jackie Chan game was retarded as hell… nothing says “wow I’m Jackie” like walking down a pixelated alleyway and jumping over row after row of barrels.

- And of course, what game event would be complete without a Dance Dance Tournament, complete with fat sweaty goths? Not DigitalLife of course, and they were in full effect, as were the obligatory lousy cosplayers, which aside from shoddy sewing skills were further hampered by the rain, which meant all the lame attempts at Naruto also left a trail of water (mixed with various body greases).

- Aside from the gaming component was the rest of the tech-oriented stuff. But unlike last year, not much of it was particularly interesting. It was either just more of the same or none of the “what the fuck?!?!” shit that made the previous DigitalLife at least somewhat redeeming, like the TV in a fridge. Portable video players seemed to be the big thing, but without the iPod Video on-hand simply perpetuated the whole “its missing something” feel that the entire show suffers from.

At least there were some bling bling cell phones (sorry, but I’m a total fucking sucker for them, for perhaps obvious reasons) courtesy, with the greatest being the new Nokia n90. Now this is a mother fucking cellphone….

So all in all, the show sucked. But whereas before I felt it was still necessary to support an event to ensure that New York gets these kind of shows, now that DigitalLife seems to be a resounding success, I’m afraid that no real attempts will be made to make it any better. If people are content with shit, then why change?

I guess its the appropriate time to mention this: especially since I believe the NDA has officially elapsed. At one point, I was attached with another major gaming expo set for NYC. Long story short, some folks down south that promote country and western shows read my thoughts on GameOn (which was what the gaming component was called last year) and felt that I had the know-how to guide efforts of their own. The plan was either to take over the gaming quotient of DigitalLife, or create their own event, called GameLive.

Again, the foundations were largely based upon my criticisms of GameOn, as well as my ideas in response (basically, how I felt it should have been done: a unique gaming event, which, among many, many things, didn’t pander to gamers or nerds, and didn’t try to one up E3 in what it did). The folks behind the initiative seemed very sincere, and obviously were very successful in what they did, but that was strictly within their own world. As time went on, not only was it clear that they didn’t understand the market they were aiming towards (as much as they wanted to help me stage an event to challenge stereotypes, which was one thing I was adamant about… such as all gamers being Maxim reading doofuses… they pretty much believed them all and it was ingrained in virtually every idea they had), they had absolutely no clue about video games in general. I then discovered how such things happen in the first place: whoever has the initial idea and the money simply finds someone whom they think has the knowledge to carry it through, in this case “a true gamer” (which I guess in this situation was me… yikes). And either this person is an idiot and the money folks don’t realize this, or in my case, the money folks hear what is suggested, gets scared because it doesn’t jibe with what has been established (regardless of its success or their inital claims to wanting to do something different) and the whole thing is abounded. Which is what I think happened here…. that and they couldn’t get their shit together.

Too bad…. it really could have been fun putting a show together, even though I would have probably died of a heart attack from all the stress before then damn thing could have happened (which would have been a disaster somehow).
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Anyway, as for the rest of the weekend, MK & I spent some time in the woods at yet another summer bungalow that the parents of MK’s friend Morgan has a slice of. It was in the northeastern portion of Long Island, and a far cry from what most people think of when they think Lawn Guyland, which is absolutely beautiful countrysides, accentuated with pristine beaches and vineyards all about. Along with Morgan, her family, and MK’s friends Audrey and Miyuki, we all went driving around the countryside and small towns, fishing, walking on the beach, eating delicious local delicacies, and making smores. The highlight was either the trip to Shelter Island, or the trips to wineries, or simply sleeping in the patio which has an absolutely gorgeous view of the private beach. All in all a wonderful weekend and a great way to rest up before a hellish week, at least on my end.

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