September 25th, 2008 by The Grey Ghost
In a recent article I worked on for GotGame, I expanded on my recurring theme of gamer romance. This article in particular explored the idea of once you’ve found yourself a girl who’s cool with video games, does one prefer to play with her or continue to play alone while she cheers on? This is a topic I’ve often discussed with men and women, gamer and non, so I was quick to sink my teeth into it.
Having quite a few anecdotes in my arsenal, I felt that I should only choose one to illustrate my point. The one I went with is most appropriate to the article, but its close second is a story that simply must be told somewhere. If this tale doesn’t apply to you, I’m sure you’ll get a chuckle from knowing someone whom it does. For those whom it does apply, see this as a warning.
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Posted in Games, Rants | No Comments »
September 24th, 2008 by The Grey Ghost
It’s a daily crusade of mine to comment against the lame conceptions of my geeky brethren. As I’ve mentioned before, the dorks of our kind flood the community with their cancerous wish lists. I understand that video game companies like Capcom monitor the web in order to assess what their audience desires in order to determine the next product to be successfully unleashed upon the consuming masses.
Here’s the thing: I love democracy and capitalism. They’re some of the best social and economical systems known to mankind because they exercise the freedom of choice. They’re also natural companions, symbiotically taking the will of the people and directing the course of the future based on popular demand. The unfortunate flaw to both of those systems, however, is that if your society is driven by the majority rule and your popular majority is dominated by idiots, a lot of poor decisions are going to be made.
What’s worse is that those who are less refined also tend to be the most vocal of any depraved community. To quote Plato, “Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools speak because they have to say something.” Ergo, video game companies observe this type of feedback and recess the growth of innovation in lieu of pumping out lines of crappy sequels. Each episode designed with the intent of appealing to the lowest common denominator. The more a product caters to the mainstream, obviously the more successfully salable it’s likely to be.
That said, I take kin to Batman in that I recognize that I’m waging a war that I may never win. Yet I feel that even if I don’t speak out, it insures 100% that my voice will never be heard. I hope that while it may act more slowly, my nuggets of reason will virally spread to others so that the enlightened minority do not fade into extinction. That’s not at all to say that I always know what’s best, but I’d like to think I can sniff out a bad idea when it presents itself. I don’t know every direct path to greatness, but I can keep some lemmings from stampeding off of a cliff.
During my adventures within the fighting game community, I’ve been part in many fanboy conversations exploring the fantasies of crossover games, even before Capcom’s “Vs.” line came into existence. There was the usual pitch of a Street Fighter Vs. Mortal Kombat, Marvel Vs. DC, Street Fighter Vs. Nintendo…and more than once, “They should make a Street Fighter Vs. Anime!”
Even in the mid-90s when the popularity of Japanese culture had not yet exploded, I felt that simply pitting the world warriors against a general idea such as “anime” was painting a pretty broad brush. It may not have been well-understood, but anime comes from more than one place, thus assembling any strong cast of intellectual properties into one product would require some expensive (not to mention risky) collaboration of licensees. I struck many a fanboy with a rolled up newspaper for suggesting such nonsense.
Lo and behold, 15 years later, we see the production of Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, a title which more or less realizes the idea “Street Fighter Vs. Anime”. Within the same year, we’re also set to witness the release of Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe, as day-late-and-a-dollar-short as that concept may be.Whether or not these titles add value to the genre, they do deliver a clear message: I done got told.
Yet I fight on… Speaking out with not only my words, but also my wallet (cuz I ain’t gonna enable these trends by buying that garbage). Whether I debunk crossover ideas or the perversion of simple character design, I’m out there somewhere. Cuz what else am I going to do with my time than bicker about video games over the Internet?
Posted in Games, Rants, Street Fighter | No Comments »
September 18th, 2008 by The Grey Ghost
At the end of every Ace Attorney game’s final case, I always have the same feeling of wanting. That’s not that the games are unsatisfying, it’s just that they’re always so good that I’m left hungry for more come the staff roll. Lucky for us, Capcom in still in ardent development of the Edgeworth-centric “Turnabout Prosecutor” title due out next year, giving us something to look forward to. But what about the meantime?
Well, what if we could make our own Phoenix Wright cases? Some passionate fans have created such software that now makes it possible for us to keep the franchise alive in Capcom’s stead. With enough fan support, the Ace Attorney library has the potential of becoming infinite. And yes, this means that all the rabid slash fiction writers can have their fantasies realized in-game and share them with the world.
There are currently only two applications, each with their own options and styles. There are already some fan-made cases available for you to test the software, with hopefully more to come in the near future.
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September 17th, 2008 by The Grey Ghost
GotGame finally fixed it so you can see only articles posted by a specific author on their site. So if you’d like to see my work there without having to sift through everyone else’s stuff, you can look me up here.
I have about four more articles that they’re sitting on before publishing. For a while, it looked like I hadn’t contributed anything in two weeks, but they’re finally releasing the stuff I’d submitted. Hopefully, more of my work will appear over the next week or so. This excites me since some of those stored in the queue are ones I’m actually pretty proud of.
Posted in Games, Site News | No Comments »
September 3rd, 2008 by The Grey Ghost
Shots have been leaked of the upcoming live-action Dragon Ball movie trailer which reveal James Marsters’ appearance as the villain, Piccolo. I’m not a fan of Dragon Ball to any degree, but I do loves me some Buffy The Vampire Slayer and its cast. And ever since I’d heard that Marsters had been cast as Piccolo, I’ve been dying to see what kind of costume they would design for the film.
I’d say I’m disappointed, but then I don’t know why I’d expected anything better. Maybe I was just really looking forward to seeing Marsters with Piccolo’s alien antennae. But no–what a shock–they made him up like a vampire.
Bit of trivia: James Marsters was originally cast to play Capt. Picard’s clone, Shinzon, in Star Trek: Nemesis. In hindsight, he probably would have been a better choice, having a closer resemblance to Patrick Stewart, but the movie was still awesome despite his absence.
Posted in Anime, TV & Movies | No Comments »
