So, that Nintendo Direct....

... WOW.  Let's go over what went on.

The biggest thing?

EARTHBOUND IS FINALLY COMING OUT ON THE WII U VIRTUAL CONSOLE!

This game has been long sought after.  The quirky SNES game was released earlier this year or last year in Japan on their Wii U virtual console, but possible legal issues kept this game from America... for now.

Anyway, it's coming out, but there is no word on what has or will be changed for the legal US release. 

The Oracle series from The Legend of Zelda will also arrive in the US for the first time.  While the originals were available separately on the Gameboy Color (I actually almost beat Oracle of Seasons, I got stuck on the final boss, and I made it about half way through Oracle of Ages at one point)  this time the two will be linked together, getting rid of the password system the original used.

Speaking of that,

Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 2 is coming to the 3DS!  I never played the first, but it should be available on the 3DS VC.  Or the Wii VC.  Either way, I should play it soon.  Did you ever play it?

Level 5 is releasing 4 games.  So far, no word on Phoenix Wright vs Professor Layton (BRING IT OVER PLEASE!!!!)  but Guild 02, among others, will arrive in the US.  As will the LAST Professor Layton game ever. (barring Wright vs Layton)    I don't know if I can handle that.  I'll miss that gentleman.

((I believe I read it will be released in the US Next year, so we will have hope!))

SMT 4 also has a release date

((The function on this blog is keeping me from finding the English trailer)  It comes out July 16th.

A lot of people are excited about this one:

Most people thought this game would go the way of Type-0

Where despite it's heavy lauds in Japan, it wouldn't come over here.  Happily, Square Enix proved everyone wrong and we'll receive it soon... in 2014.  It's kind of a sequel to Four Heroes of Light so pick that up if you haven't already.

On the Mario side of things, there is a new Yoshi's Island, Super Luigi U DLC (to continue the Year of Luigi), and Mario and Luigi: Dream Team is coming to the US and Europe.


There where others, but these are the ones I'm most excited about.  (Though I am debating on Animal Crossing, I've never played one before.)

1) FREAKING EARTHBOUND, THE HOLY GRAIL OF VIRTUAL CONSOLE GAMES, WILL BE AVAILABLE.  We'll see what and how much gets changed, but this should be great.

2) I adore Legend of Zelda games.  This should be a lot of fun.  The game has a simple formula, but it's very concise, the worlds are fleshed out, and it always works. 

3) The Professor Layton games are great challenges, but more importantly we grow to care about each of these characters.  Plus, in a world of violent anti heroes, to have such a gentleman like Hershel Layton and his apprentice, Luke Triton, is so refreshing.

4)  While I have played one SMT game (Devil Survivor 1... I still haven't beaten it)  I know a lot of people are interested and I DO want to give it a try.

5) Bravely Default is a Square Enix RPG... I'm a total sucker for those games. 

6) I'm most excited from Dream Team.  It focuses quite a bit on Luigi and it's an RPG. 


So, all in all, a very successful Nintendo Direct conference. 

What did you like the most?

Elizabeth and Booker's relationship and how other relationships need to be re evaluated. (Major Spoilers)

Elizabeth Colmstock is actually Anna, Booker's daughter.  However, we don't find that out (conclusively) until the last few minutes of the game. 

While it does provide a wonderful and interesting dynamic, especially considering their age and how they react to eachother for the first time, the game never provided any large romantic hints for each other. 

(Yeah, this never happened in game)

And when the game dropped the reveal,  some people were happy.  Others felt disgusted.  They had grown quite fond of the two as a couple and father/daughter pairings are generally agreed to not be a good thing.  Other people just said screw it and continued to think of them as a couple. 

However, the problem lies in the assumption.  If you have a male and female character together people are often to assume that the two are to be romantically linked unless they are early on announced as family.  

This is something we need to change.  (And we need more mother and daughter/son games but that is a different story) 

Platonic loving relationships (also known a Zucchini's, QPP, or Queer Platonic Partner) need to be more of a thing.  There is a glorious beauty in relationships that offer companionship without any romance.  They are also just as valid.

Let me direct you to Elementary.

Elementary charts the evolving relationship between a Sherlock Holmes and a (female) Joan Watson.  The creators have said, repeatedly, that the relationship will stay platonic, and as a result the series is an incredible breath of fresh air.  The two share a house, Joan has changed in the room with Sherlock (undercovers with his back turned for her privacy)  and the two argue over chores.  It could be romantic, but it's incredibly platonic and very sweet.  There are no kisses, some rare hugs, and a lot of calling eachother out on Sherlock's problematic behaviors and Joan's level of deduction (Both of which are improving.  Sherlock is behaving better and Joan is deducing more)  and we are never doubting how they care for each other.

Games need more of that.  We need to talk to characters without wanting romantic outcomes.  NieR has every one of his companions in love with him.  (Seriously, Emil is canonically Gay, Kaine is in love with him, and  Yonah is either his sister or his daughter depending on the version)  Cloud gets every girl (and Barrett) on a date with him.  Jack and Doctor Tenenbaum are not friends, just allies.  Rudy falls in love with Princess Cecilia.  The Kingdom Hearts trios are... complicated.

This turns relationships that could be complex one dimensional.  Romantic attachment leads only to an attempt at marriage or sex down the line.  When we view a relationship in only romantic or familial terms, we strip it of any extra nuances, or deny that a love can exist between friends.  These extra nuances are what make someone more fleshed out.  These relationships are NOT there because they because they "Have" to (I.E. family)  or out of hope or knowledge of some sort of payment (Romantic love)  these people are doing this because they want too. They are doing this out of love with no expectation of anything back.  And, this is happening on both sides.  Neither the boy nor the girl expect any sort of romantic repayment or familial devotion.  They are doing it because they have something in common and like each other in such a way all they want is this companionship. 

Think of what the writers can do with that!  At what point could it become too much?  Could one support the other at home or separated?  Would one die for the other?  There are so many untalked about subtleties in this kind of relationship.  How would Final Fantasy be different if the Tifa/Cloud/Aerith relationship didn't exist?  If Yonah was NieR's friend, not his sister or daughter? If Tenenbaum and Jack got to know each other better and decided to help each other for the relationship's own sake? (And not because of what Atlus could do to Rapture and the surface world) 

We need more of this kind of relationship.  We need to show how much love and trust can go into a non romantic relationship.  Dipper breaks up with an abusive boyfriend for Mabel, and Mabel saves Dipper when the abusive boyfriend fights back.  Joan knows enough to know that she MUST stick around when he's in danger of relapsing even when she's no longer employed as a sober companion, Sherlock knows parental approval for her Sobriety Companion career is important to her so he talks up her skills and results at a dinner with her parents. 

And Booker and Elizabeth? Well, he took down an entire civilization just to say her. She in turn went back to a place that was worse than death, sacrifices her sanity and a version of her existence to keep him alive and to fix it. It's because they are friends, partners, and it isn't until AFTER they are revealed to be family.  Not because of romantic love.

Game Design: Lego Racers

This is a basic Kart racer.  However, it has a really nice twist on a basic Kart system to make this game unique.  Well, two.

One is the short cuts you see in the videos.  The second is that the white bricks upgrade any of the effects.  the colored block is the basic move (shield, speed, outright attack, delayed attack) and each white brick upgrades the attack.  Shields get more powerful, you eventually can teleport ahead of the other racers by a significant amount, attacks get more powerful, and you can mess with another racer's driving system. 

This is actually a nice twist on the game.  You must plan ahead, but it's a bit of a gamble.  Either the attack will be weak or you can use it immediately, or you can save up to get a game breaker, but it might not happen until late in the race, and too late. 

It's a very nice touch, that I wish I  could see in more Kart racers.  I'm actually not sure if it was in it's sequel...

Musical Monday: Knight of a Foreign Land (Cladun! This is a RPG)

I have not played the game.  I should.  I also really like this song. 

Deleted Content: Aerith (Final Fantasy 7) (Spoilers)

So, Aerith Dies.  We know that. 

However, Aerith has unique text and animations post death (for example, after the snowboarding ride), and then there's the Sephiroth glove/Aerith's postion controversy...

Long story short, for such a critical scene, it was sloppily animated.

Which is why some people think, it was actually later.

See, there is this background scene in the game's code.

If you access it with a cheating device, there are no character models, no pathways to walk on, no dialogue but there IS Aerith's theme, which plays at her death.  (With that being said, a small part of it is used briefly by the game during the Northern Cave sequence, and the Northern Cave sequence uses a similar background)

So, using the deleted dialogue, the death sloppiness, and the scene, some people think her death was actually supposed to happen early in Disk 2 rather than disk one.

It would also explain why Sephiroth kills her by jumping down.  If you think about it, there are other ways for him to kill her, this doesn't make as much sense.

However, in this scene, Sephiroth is sleeping/dead in the Materia in the tree root on top of the image.  (this is in the official scene too)

((Also, not sure why this is different from the final image, but I didn't pay that much attention to the background)) 

Sephiroth wakes up after Cloud gives him the materia

and then Cloud and Tifa fall into the Lifestream. 

But, if Aerith's death WAS supposed to happen in disk 2 (as her unique dialogue hints)  then when Sephiroth woke up, he would have jumped down to kill her.  It might fix the gloves/no gloves controversy and would give an explanation for why he chose that method to kill her instead of something a bit more normal... like stabbing her in the chest. 

As it stands, this is all mostly speculation, yes talked about in the FF7citadel, but it is something to think about.

Thoughts on Bioshock Infinite (VERY SPOILERY)

So, I finished the game.  I semi rushed through it.  (Basically, I kept a list nearby that had all the audiodiary and other background info locations.  That way I wouldn't really have to search.)  And... Because of a mindscrewy ending, I'm still digesting it.  ((I'm also trying to figure out if it makes less or more sense then the idea of Timetravel in Kingdom Hearts.  The only time Time Travel really works is in Doctor Who... and Back to the Future.))

Anyway,  the big twist in the end is Colmstock IS Booker from an alternate time line, and Elizabeth is actually Anna, his daughter, which he kind of sold.  Also, Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite are "What If's" of eachother and there will ALWAYS be "A man, a city, and a lighthouse." 

Part of the reason why I love Bioshock 1 is how much we learn about the city.  There are 127 Audio Diaries.  These Diaries, when not found in random boxes, are often linked to one another, the city, and are found next to the people's corpses or in significant areas.  (In most circumstances.)  While the focus of Bioshock Infinite shifted from the city to the people, they never felt as connected.  All the dimension hopping left several questions unanswered, (and made a few things more confusing)  And yet it still feels brilliant.

The city is not the focus, I get that, but in Bioshock we connected to the city through the people. Through the audio diaries.  Through exploring homes.

Which, that's actually my main issue with Infinite.  Our inability to explore.  Many of the shops were blocked, the differences between the universes were not explored (Seriously, I want to find out a bit more about the old universes and what happened?  What about Earth1 Daisy?)  I'm not saying the universe had to lack gravity but... we never really found out the differences.  And, I wanted to do that. I wanted to look more into each store, how would they differ?  In Bioshock 1 we got to visit many stores, and they were drastically different.  There were a lot of stores, and they could be different, but those were only in a few levels.

((That being said, Finktown and Lutece Labs/Memorial Gardens was glorious.  But I wish other areas got that much detail))

So, in the end, my main issue was the lack of background detail.  It didn't help that battles were set up to move you along instead of letting you evaluate things.  The battles rushed you through when I wanted to explore.  I was almost livid when a Mandatory Finkton fight kept me from listening to everyone talking.  I actually RESET so I could hear what people said.  It was fascinating.  And I did NOT need fights all the way through the levels.

Yes, Bioshock did regularly spawn enemies, but as long as you did the initial clear out, you were usually okay.  There were a lot of flagged enemy encounters and it was...distracting.  I could not look at the lack of detail when I was in a firefight.  The firefights had much more enemies then a Bioshock fight and, as a result, I was just tired and wanted to move on when I was finished, rather than interested in exploring. 

In addition, the Vox Populi threads were dropped.  Yes, there was no more reason (and I understand that)  But they never really dove into how it got started.  We have the fact the founders are gigantic racists and Daisy was wrongly accused of murder, but other than that, we have nothing.  I want to know more, I want to know about her lieutenants, I want to know how Daisy Prime would react compared to Daisy world 3, What happened in World 2 before and after you left? 


We don't know.  And this is prime world building areas. 

While I honestly liked the game, I feel like we were cheated out of some of it.  We were cheated out of what made Columbia, Columbia.  We don't know more of the ins and outs.  We don't know of the random friendships, complaints about the Sander Cohen characters for stealing apprentices, we follow a female soldier throughout the game through the audio diaries, and then she just disappears!

We don't have all those little and random bits and pieces of locations and character knowledge that make the first game so wonderful. The game is still great, but it's one step short of amazing.

Localization: Sora in Kingdom Hearts (later Hallow Bastion visit)

So, bowing in the Japanese Culture has a lot of meaning.  The angle, how long you do it, the rank of the person, it all denotes different things.

Actually, Sony got into trouble after the PSN Hacking scandal because they did not bow for a full minute. ((And I can't find that now.  Here, have some info on bowing: it's a good primer))

Okay, now that that is out of the way... this should give you some idea on Sora's bow.

While English has "Grovel like a dog" or somewhat similar in our vocabulary, it does not do justice to this scene.  Due to the length and the position of him being on his hands and knees, Sora is putting himself so below Saix  he has effectively declared Saix to be his master.  He has (Possibly figuratively) Given up his freedom to be with Kairi. 

That has no English connotation.

Feminism and Lego Marvel Super Heroes

So I just found this trailer today (which is why the post is late) and I AM looking forward to the game,  But, well, I have a problem.

There are a total of seven characters shown in the trailer.  Hulk, Iron Man, Spider-man, Sandman, Abomination, Fury, and Coulson (Who does not sound like Clark Gregg, which is odd)

And there are no girls in it. 

Maria Hill could have taken Coulson's role there (Possibly, Sharon Carter is another.)  Spider-man may have  more of a mainstream draw then Jessie/Spider-woman but she could have shown up.  Pepper has the alternate identity as "Rescue" And she focuses on clean up and saving random citizens, why couldn't she be in the background?  (Please note that when she got her armor, she insisted on no weapons of any sort.  So, I understand why she's not in a pure "Gameplay" trailer.) And no hints of Amora watching?  Then there's Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers who currently has her own run on the comics, is leading the Avengers, and has gotten praise from everyone for her story, the writing, her character, and her costume.  Not to mention Black Widow was one of the first characters announced. 

I know Wolverine, Thor, and Deadpool didn't show up either, but the Marvel Comics do have a lot of popular female heroes.  Why couldn't any show up?

Musical Monday: Kolima Forest (Golden Sun)

This is another game I have to beat.  Seriously, the last dungeon is incredibly confusing but the game itself is really good.  It's a great JRPG that has all of the basic forms but is drastically different from Final Fantasy and WildARMS.  (I need to talk more about this and WildARMS though...)

Enjoy just one of the great pieces of music. 

Game Design: The Evolution of Elizabeth's powers

When a game has as long of a development cycle for Elizabeth, we can see how she evolves.  From
This:

To This:

To the end result, this:

In addition, We also watch her evolve with her powers.

She started off as telekinesis:

then she grows more powerful by creating things out of thin air:

Later on, they introduce the tear idea,  but have it include allies and the horse scene.  (Neither of which happen in game)

And then her in the final game, where tears are to an alternate reality, but are in black and white. (No gameplay due to spoilers)


It's interesting to see how much has changed.  The tears are a nice touch, and help make the game more interesting.  The telekinesis version probably comes from the "Techie vs luddites" version of the game which was scrapped for not being interesting enough.  It is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure you can extend the idea throughout the game.  You could put in elements of notoriously depressing Cyberpunk, but there shouldn't have been much in 1912 US. 

The tears themselves are more interesting.  While they accomplish the same fact as the "Creation from their air" Aspect of Elizabeth's powers, it instead gives her a distinct otherwordly (Literally) quality.  Especially because not everything from Columbia that exists in that world is from that world. It also turns her from a "Mysterious Waif" (think Namine from Kingdom Hearts) to a expertly limited powerhouse.  Instead of explaining why Elizabeth can't summon thunderclouds each time you get into a fight,   they basically just say "She's accessing an alternate reality where there was a water puddle there and nothing else."  Which does make more sense, especially with a comment early on where she explains most realities she looks into are the same as our own, with very minor exceptions.  (One example she gives is the cup has coffee instead of tea.)

Some of the realities do lead to interesting complications.  (for example, a plot important building has a freight hook in it in an alternate reality.  It could be in a different place, or the building may not exist.)  but the idea gives a definite shape, control, and limit to her powers and prevents excessive wondering about why things aren't there and keeps the game from breaking wide open.

 (In all seriousness,  if you could access a reality where you could summon Subject Delta, Eleanor Lamb, and Jack Ryan at the same time, you would.  The game would have to come up with an idea why you couldn't and... yeah.)



So, as I head off to finish the game and deal with, er, the subtle and excessive foreshadowing.  (Seriously, I checked the Bioshock Wiki on what I thought was a minor character only to read a rather spoilery sentence.  ugh.)  I leave you with watching how our  Elizabeth grew up.