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Comic and Rant for Tuesday, September 24, 2002
Sketch Book Day 1 |
Sorry for the extended vacation, True Believers, but now I’m back. Wai! Wai! During my laziness-and-some-unavoidable-higher-priority-activities-but-mostly-laziness-induced vacation, I got some more GBA games. The DBZ RPG is kind of fun, and I’m sure kids would enjoy it, but it’s too damn short! James Rock of ARFWorks tells me that it’s a stripped down version of much better SNES game called The Legend Of The Super Saiyajin, which was never released in the US. Too bad they didn’t do that here. It would also have been nice if the audio clips (which consist entirely of grunts, Gokuu saying “Kamehameha!”and Vegeta saying something like “I’m the most powerful warrior!” had used the Japanese seiyuu rather than American voices (which for all I know might not even be the ones from the US dub!). Another GBA game I recently bought is Atari Anniversary Advance. It features six letter perfect (AFAIK) classic Atari arcade games - Super Breakout, Asteroids, Battlezone, Centipede, Missile Command and Tempest - plus a trivia game called (appropriately if not too originally) “Atari Trivia Challenge” Like many previous titles, including Namco Museum and Pac-Man Collection, you can customize the settings, but you now have the added options of alternate controls and “Portrait”or “Landscape”view in cases when the arcade original had the former setup (if you don’t know what I’m talking about look at your computer’s printer settings). Unfortunately (you didn’t think I’d be completely positive, did you?), you toggle between these settings by pushing “Select,”which could really mess you up if you accidentally hit it during the game (which is pretty easy to do). The only other complaints are the minor ones that all GB/GBC/GBA ports of classic arcade games share, namely that the graphics are sometimes tiny and difficult to see (more so for GBA, though it might be less if I had one of these, which you might be able to help me with), and that some games require specific controls. The original Battlezone had two two-directional joysticks, one for each tread of the tank (a control scheme so realistic that the US military actually commissioned a special version of the game for training purposes), Tempest had a 360° analogue knob (though it’s not too bad with the D+pad), Super Breakout (and the original Breakout for that matter) had an analogue paddle, and Missile Command had a Trak-Ball (analogue again!) and a button for each of the three missile bases. This causes some difficulty when trying to play the games with the very much unalterable GBA controls (the alternate control setting for Battlezone tries to approximate the original, but it doesn’t work too well - maybe if L and Down were the left tread, and R and A were the right, and B was “Fire?”. The trivia game’s controls are also a bit confusing, as one must use A,B, L or R to chose between multiple-choice answers. A better system, IMHO, would have been to use the D+pad to toggle through the answers and a button (A?) to choose. Curiously, this is the only game with no options. Fortunately Centipede seems to work just as well with a D+Pad as it did with a Trak-Ball, and Asteroids works well with both control settings, though I prefer the default where Up is “Thrust”(one the few times a D+Pad works better than a joystick) - I suppose a button’s a button, unless you need three for equally important functions. To be fair, Battlezone is very playable (and fun!) with the standard setting, though I miss the realism of the two joysticks (well, as real as a green-on-black geometric world with mountains that never get any closer can be). You can also choose between English, German, French or Spanish text for all the games (except, once again, Trivia Challenge), in case you want to try rationalizing gaming as a language learning experience (then again, that’s not too unusual for an Infogrames game). Sadly, the other cartridge I bought, Midway’s Greatest Arcade Hits, has far less going for it. First off, while the ports for Defender and Robotron 2084 seem letter perfect, in Sinistar you can barely hear the Sinistar speak (and if you don’t think that’s worth complaining about, keep in mind that the speech also acts as a warning to players - not hearing it changes the dynamics of the game), and Joust is actually less accurate than the previous GBC version - the points don’t flash onscreen (e.g. you pick up an egg and the number “250”appears) and there’s no “glook-glook-glook!”sound (apparently a Williams stock sound effect, as a similar one occurs in Robotron). More seriously, you can’t move immediately after respawning, something you could do in the GBC version and the arcade original. True, you’re temporarily invulnerable at that point, but it’s frustrating, it messes with one’s strategy and timing, and, as I’ve said before it wasn’t like that in the arcade! Some of the other sounds seem a bit off, but I can’t testify to that. I’m also pretty sure that, again unlike the GBC version, it’s not two player linkable. Control problems are present here as well. The original Robotron had two joysticks - one for movement and one for firing. Here you’re stuck with either firing in the direction you’re moving or staying in one place (by holding down B, plus A to fire), which is rather awkward. The Arcade Sinistar apparently had a 49-directional joystick, making the 4-way-and-occaisionally-8-way D+pad just a wee bit inferior. Worse, it just seems to make your ship rotate as it flies inexorably in whichever direction it’s aimed. The visibility problem is more evident in t his game than any of the others, as the crystals which are vital to your defense are virtually indistinguishable from the stars in the background. I suppose I could also complain about Defender’s altered control scheme - instead of a “Thrust”button and a “Reverse”button you just Thrust left or Thrust right by pushing the appropriate direction on the D+pad - but the fact is that it’s easier that way, at least for me. Still, it would be nice if one had the option to mimic the original controls (for those who, unlike me, don’t totally suck at the game) and that’s where a true problem lies. There are no options. None. Zip. Not for any of the games. This is disappointing not only in light of the games mentioned earlier, but also since the GBC versions had options! Now some of you might argue “Well the arcade versions didn’t have options!”Wrong! Most arcade games of the time (and possibly most now) had a series of switches inside whereby one could adjust difficulty level, number of lives, the score needed for bonus lives, and sometimes other things as well. Admittedly they were mostly left on default, but the fact remains that the games did have adjustable options, and the options in recent home ports are often based on them. On a more cheerful note, I also bought this splendid DVD called Stan Lee’s Mutants, Monsters & Marvels. What’s so great about it? In five words: Kevin Smith Interviews Stan Lee. While this in itself would be enough to commend it, I’d be amiss if I didn’t also compliment the production company Creative Light Video for using multiple camera angles and showing clips from the appropriate comics, thus adding dynamics to what could otherwise have been a very static looking video, but showing enough restraint that the conversation wasn’t overpowered. Stan offers some interesting and entertaining insights, and while he’s occasionally wrong, like the time he claims the name of Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, was invented by his brother Larry Leiber (actually Larry called it the “Uru Hammer,”and when the real name was later discovered it was fixed by claiming that Mjolnir is made of a mystical Asgardian metal called “Uru”, such things are few and far between, not to mention understandable considering how long ago it was and how much Stan has done. The chemistry is superb - both are huge fans of the other’s work and modest about their own achievements - and Kevin is a HUGE comics fan and very knowledgeable about Stan’s accomplishments, and thus asks the sort of questions a fan would want to hear. I suppose the closest I could come to a major complaint is that it’s too short! Let’s see, anything else? Oh, right! The strip! While I have a few in various stages of readiness, none are ready to go just yet, so you’ll have to make due with some sketches I did at work. Oh yeah, that’s right, I got a job. It’s telephone surveying, which is much less evil than telemarketing, not to mention much less stressful (if someone isn’t interested, I don’t have to bully them into staying, and I don’t get blamed if they hang up! Yatta!). Explanations accompany the sketches. There are a lot more things I’d like to tell you about, like Otakon, movies, and the fact that I finally got a comic up here and a small amount of progress here, but that will have to wait until next time, which I promise will be sooner than the last next time. |
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