I want you to meet the fastest racing game ever made.





...EVER. MADE.

I have seen way too many poor decisions this year to hold this in. I have to say it or else I'll explode. So edited from the famous 1976 movie, Network. May this edited rant, created from two scenes, touch something in you too, Internet...I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a recession. Everybody's worried about orphan works or scared of the Warner Media Group. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit looking up Google News where some online newscaster tells us that today we had banned eroge and we have more greenhouse gases, as if that's the way it's supposed to be! We know things are bad - worse than bad, They're crazy! It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't do anything anymore. We sit at our computers, and slowly the Internet we are logged into is getting smaller, and all we say is, ' Please, at least leave us alone in our homepages. Let me have my torrents and my deviantART and my MP3 collection and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone!' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone! I want you to get MAD! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the censorship and the eroge and Internet privacy and GTA. All I know is that first you've got to get mad! You've got to say, "I'm still a HUMAN BEING, GODDAMNIT! My LIFE has VALUE!!" So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now, and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out or go to your journal like I am now and yell it, type it, I don't care what you do: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!" I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your browser windows, open them and take a deep breath and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad! You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about anime and Warner media and censorship. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!
And furthermore...
Eroge is not the truth! Eroge and the entirety of anime are a God-damned amusement park! It is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, side-show freaks, lion tamers, and football players. They're in the boredom-killing business! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, we people are the real thing! THEY are the illusion! So turn off your eroge games and your media players. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off! Turn them off right in the middle of the sentence I'm speaking to you now! TURN THEM OFF!

Well, folks, I follow F1 and I'd be lying if I didn't say what happened in Austrailia yesterday was a shocker. The surprise might have been tempered somewhat by the fact that everyone was using the completely different-feeling 2009-rules cars with the slicks, KERS and less rear downforce, but it was still a surprise nonetheless.

I mean, let's recap what happened:

* Brawn-Mercedes' Jensen Button performed a Grand Slam in a completely new team. What's a Grand Slam? In Formula One, a Grand Slam's when you pole, then lead the entire race and win. The white Mercedes proved to be a stable performer but I can't help but think it looks...unfinished in that white paintjob...

* Reubens Barrichello had a lousy start, dropping back to 12th, but clawed his way back to a 1-2 finish for Brawn-Mercedes. Who'd have thought?...

* Reigning champ Lewis Hamilton qualified 18th after throwing out his gearbox in qualifying but through skill and luck, much like Barrichello, got up to 4th place, which was changed to a 3rd place podium after Trulli was caught passing under the caution flag.

* All those crashes. Some people are gonna blame the 2009 designs for all those crashes, hamstringing the drivers and all that, and while the more bitter side of me wants to say that, I think it's what the cars were designed for that caused it.
...what, crashing? No! The 2009 rules cleaned up the turbulence behind a car so it would be easier to overtake, although they did make design errors like the front wing now being out of the driver's line of sight. I think what happened is that the drivers saw these overtaking-friendly cars as their chance to attack their opponents relentlessly. Some, like Hamilton and Barrichello, used these regulations to carve up the opposition, but others weren't so lucky, like all the dudes who spun out on the first turn of the first lap, Vettel and Kubica's crash and Nakajima's crash.

* Both Ferraris basically bowing out, and neither getting points. Rough, rough start for my boys in red. Hang in there, I want the Ferrari/McLaren battle I was waiting for!

* ...oh, and what the crap was up with the commentators trying to coin the term "schlamozzle" for auto racing? I found it more annoying than a good term.

In any case, the 2009 cars denied some of my expectations and confirmed some other ones. Let's see what happens next round.

See you all in a couple weeks!

This is my personal list, after a little consideration, of video game bosses who are actually awful at the jobs they're given, discounting fellas who are almost always obligated to fail at some point, like King Bowser or Dr. Eggman.
This is NOT a list of the worst boss fights I've experienced, simply a showing of bosses who have a game plan and fail at it miserably, with or without the hero's help. It does also help if the bosses themselves are awful fights.
Now let's see the top-ten bosses who fail the furthest! 

( Let's start the countdown! )

OK, OK, overly dramatic title aside, this really isn't talking about anything THAT serious. However, this is something I feel I MUST get off my chest.

April 1st of this year, and Key announced its new visual novel, Rewrite, right? You know, this one: key.visualarts.gr.jp/rewrite/rewrite.html
Yeah, yeah, I know, the one we all totally thought wasn't happening because someone from 07th Expansion is working with Key, and it's so totally announced on April 1st, but April Fools, it's so totally true and they're making it and all that...

OK, good. We're all on the same page. I think. Wait, no we aren't! You there, in the back...


NOW! Here's my problem...well, my PROBLEMS that have to do with a BIGGER, underlying problem, possibly with the entire way I think about visual novels and storylines now.

Rewrite is going to be partially written by Ryukishi07, who was part of the team that wrote for the HIGURASHI FRANCHISE. The tagline, more or less translated, is something like "Could it possibly be rewritten, that fate of hers?" Higurashi did this Groundhog's Day-with-torture thing, for those just entering the classroom, and I saw the anime and a clipshow of splatters from Higurashi and School Days helped along by one of my friends, the unshakable [info]koretetsu , during one of our (sort-of) famous Skype chats. Hell, maybe it's on Skypejackers. But I think this has scarred my opinion of visual novels worse than the inimitably beautiful performance Planetarian gave me (Planetarian, you see, was just that good that Reverie and her story have set a sort of...ludicrously high bar that I think only Air, at least in anime form, has leapt upwards to just barely clear) because...well...I've gone dark as well.

Someone help me! I'm going into waiting for Rewrite expecting that girl there to be stabbed, thrown off a building, tied up and gutted like a fish, have her fingernails removed or her hands nailed to her classroom desk, and a whole host of al sorts of other terrible fates, "rewritten" over and over again until she gets to something she survives! I'm trying to let go, but...well, I guess I'm just venting. I'll wait for more news about Rewrite and pray that Ryukishi performs as well with Key as he did with 07th Expansion to write Higurashi.

...but...

...will it prove capable of standing alongside Planetarian? Can Reverie and the new girl hold the trophy aloft together?

...well now, that's the new question.

ANYWAYS!

I'm offering this LJ entry for speculation of all kinds. Chat, argue, get into fistfights, break into song...
...OI! AND YOU IN THE BACK, PAY ATTENTION WHEN I'M UP HERE! ONE MORE STUNT LIKE THAT AND I'M SENDING A NOTE TO YOUR PARENTS!

OK, everyone, I've decided on another Scenes From A Hat round! For instructions, look for Scenes From A Hat Round 1.

Today's scene is:

"Experiments Brainiac: Science Abuse Will Never Do."


You have until May 10 to submit entries.

Go get 'em!

OK, I had this idea for a little contest. Anyone out there looking at my journal, get creative because I'm making a Scenes from a Hat game. I'll put down a topic, and what I need from you are "scenes" you can make up from the topics I give you. It's quick, it's painless, and it's a lot of fun. What's the prize for winning? I will turn the tagline for 42 Megabytings from "Swimming right after a big, heavy meal since 2007" into the winning scene for either every week or bi-weekly.

I'll see how well this goes, so please give me some good ones!

This time, the scene is...

"Lines sure to ruin any conversation."

...the deadline is two weeks from now, and if there are really too few answers, I'll cut it off at a week. So get moving!


EDIT: Congratulations to koretetsu for his entry, "There's a squid in my underpants!"

Hello, hello, and thrice hello. First off, don't expect this one to become a regular thing, I'm not the kind who has lively or interesting ideas for this sorta thing.

ANYWAYS! On with the show.

You are a gondolier. One night, you are asked by a mysterious-looking woman to take her to some destination, one you've never been to and don't even think you should be going to. You've heard about this lady and that she might be trouble...even that she's got a bodycount to her. You're alone, save for your guest.

Your call.


As part of a required test protocol, we will not monitor this LJ post. You will be entirely on your own. Good luck!







...








As part of a required test protocol, my previous statement suggesting that I would not monitor the LJ post was an outright fabrication. As part of another required test protocol, we will stop enhancing the truth in 3... 2...
...*static*

Yep! Lo and behold, I have not suddenly abandoned my LJ!

Anyways, let's get right to it.

I've recently found a new anime series to be excited about, known as Aria. Any manga readers out there will also know the series as "Aqua." It's a series about girls in a recreated Venice on a terraformed Mars, their careers as gondoliers, and their interpersonal relationships. It's a bit sci-fi and sometimes fantasy, but it's mostly slice-of-life, a kind of series I used to never bother with. I dunno, it's sort of because I view anime as a sort of delicious form of escapism from the everyday. At least...that's what I thought, since the majority of slice-of-life series I've encountered were about high school students or something like...no, no, just high school students.

The thing about how Aria changed my opinions is simple, really: the series manages to be charming and laid-back without being boring. Sort of like how cruising around town with the top down in an Italian sports car can make someone feel as good as finding an emtpy stretch of highway and getting up to 179 MPH without the cops noticing. You're allowed to drink in the rich setting, the interpersonal relationships, the little mannerisms. Rather than leaving me feeling like some kind of intrusive third party staring in on the characters' private moments, I feel like I should be someone they know very well, walking right beside them, taking in the day just like them.

In short, this series has charm, the exact sort of charm that other stories, like, say, Planetarian, have. It's that ability to find the magic in every day, rather than bother itself with Girl X and Boy Y pointedly NOT able to divulge their feelings for each other.

It's not like all the other series I've seen lately, where flaming muscle cars go sliding down Main Street upside down and explode in gigantic fireballs every three minutes, where people carry around heavy weaponry and swords with their own area codes as if they were cellphones, and where everyone seems to have muscles larger than most superminis. And their own unique martial art. It won't rush
 you, nor will it force you to sit by while the characters go faffing about for several episodes. There's a point to everything, even the little things.

Isn't that a lesson we could all stand to learn?

OK, about more than a week back, I tackled a thought about Planetarian and how to turn it into a kickin' anime (God, my eyes just rolled looking at that phrase. "kickin' anime?" Ugh...). Now, I'm gonna try (and possibly fail) at what I want in a certain game. A very, very certain kind of game. Airplane racing.

See, for some reason, I see the concept hacked up and sorta gotten wrong a bit when visited every once in a while. Oh, sure, people might call futuristic racing a lot of plane racing, but it isn't, and while airplanes can go hella fast nowadays, the genre just hasn't been explored. Only two exceptions I'm willing to make are with Diddy Kong Racing (although, admittedly, the flying shared digital real estate with cars and hovercraft and was more kart racing), and Freaky Flyers (again, more of a karting game, so not exactly what I mean.) Only time a game seems ready to take to the skies is to fight, and frankly, even a hardened Ace Combat and After Burner vet like me is asking for something else to do in an airplane.

There are a few air racing games, yeah, ranging from the good (Air Racing Championship, NGen Racing) to the OK (Hresvelgr, but is that really plane racing or specialized futuristic racing?) to the bad (M.A.C.H.) And if I'll be completely honest, they're all really obscure.

But I'm trailing off now.

So, anyway, a plane racing game. Why a plane racing game of all things? Well, it could show off all the pretty next-gen capabilities of the new consoles, or something like that. Besides, it'll be unique since there's not many of them, and if it works, it'll be praised for it. Anyway, to the formula:

1) Should probably specialize in jets, preferably current ones or near-futuristic ones. NGen Racing had this formula, but to be honest, I thought they had missed a huge chunk of jets they could've used. I know a big chunk of MiG lore that would look the business in racing form. Imagine a historic section with F-86s and MiG 15s rekindling their old rivalries...an Extreme Speed class full of Blackbirds, Foxbats, and so forth...

2) Semi-realistic flight mechanics. Everything like gravity and aerodynamics and weight and inertia and the threat of stalling and all that, but with that Ace Combat-style arcadey feel so it still feels fast and nimble. If you peg your game as a simulator with simulator controls, casual gamers might be turned off. They're complex things, flight simulators. Fun, yes. But they're also quite complex, especially if your main objective is semi-unrealistic racing.

3) Diverse, unique environments. Lots of racing games, like M.A.C.H., had different environments that only sort of distinguished themselves from one another. It sorta went: racing with city scenery, racing with rocky scenery, racing with icy scenery. Each sort of environment and course has to have various technical bits and unique feelings to them. Every obstacle is unique, and must avoid having the feeling of a big, undulating canyon, which is the case more often than not. You know, big, undulating canyon made out of buildings, or out of a river canal, or a mountain valley, or...a canyon...

4) High flying. Airplanes enjoy a third dimension to explore over cars and boats and hovering cyborg-piloted magneto-mobiles from Planet Zarg in the year 3000. This has a bit to do with the above point, since in order to really get the sense of flight down, the "big, undulating canyon" problem must be solved. Solving the canyon problem also takes care of that other problem with a lot of plane racers (although NGen Racing SORTA got this right, it sorta didn't) deal with, and that's environments that are open to exploring. Do you want to cut across a big section of rock, skim along the surface, or slalom between towers? Ideally, you should have all those options.

5) If there's weaponry, it's gotta be well-implemented. The biggest mistake a combat racing game can make is to place so much emphasis on combat that racing takes a back seat and turns into a slow, bullet-thick, explodey, frustrating sludge through tar and plastic explosives. WipEout has been careful about this for years, with the exception of Fusion. Racing, especially air racing and futuristic racing, is all about speed and pushing the limits of beautiful, infallible velocity. Weapons should cause opponents to screw up, not immediately slow them to a crawl. The same goes for customizing. M.A.C.H. made the critical mistake of making the mods so outrageous to already ridiculous original plane designs that the finished products looked absolutely stupid. The modifications also need to have a give-and-take effect, like the ones from Ace Combat X. If they're just adding stats, that could ruin aircraft balance.

6) Deep gameplay. Lots of tracks, nuanced gameplay, lots of planes or parts...whichever combination leads to deep gameplay with simple objectives. By that, I mean if it's racing, it's just racing. Also, if it's something else, it needs its own gameplay mode. Freaky Flyers tried to stick more and more onto just racing. I think last I heard, there were up to several extra objectives to every race other than just crossing the finish line. That's fine with a karter, but a serious air racer should be about...well, air racing.

7) Original designs, at least a few original plane designs. Just like Ace Combat, there need to be some unique, original superplanes to compete in a sort of "Formula" class.  Just something a little extra to show off to the fans.

So what's that add up to? Nothing much, actually, just a solid game with deep gameplay. But these suggestions, I think, have some credence to them. Of course, it's entirely up to the developers, but this is what I want, not what I'll get.
Ah, the glory of the pipe dream...

Yikes. 2008.

Who woulda guessed, huh? To everyone, Happy New Year, and to be honest, that song's correct: all's quiet on New Year's Day.

Ah well, who cares, not much to talk about, except a big fat Happy New Year to all.

Yeah, first post, probably not going to go too deep (but then again, my ideas have a tendency to go deeper than I intend them to go), but hey, here I go.

I am a big Key fan.

I've gone through Air, Kanon, and Planetarian, and am probably going to make a swooping dive straight into Clannad sometime in the near future. But there, I've got a thought: Air, Kanon, and Clannad have all been successfully adapted into anime series, and a few Planetarian fans have been clamoring for a Planetarian anime. Thing is, though, people think Planetarian wouldn't make a good anime, citing the fact that it probably wouldn't have enough material to make a good series.

I beg to differ, and I have a source of inspiration from Key itself: Air.

See, Air had three story arcs: Summer, in which Yukito first encounters Misuzu, Moon, in which we encounter Kanna, Ryuya, and Uraha, and Air, in which the relationship between the Summer and Moon arcs is revealed.

Now apply this to Planetarian. All of Planetarian is not encompassed in just the visual novel, but a peculiar little pair of drama CDs. There's "A Snow Globe," which is pre-the whole big war thing and comes before the events of the visual novel, and then there's "Hoshi No Hito," which comes way after the events of the visual novel.

Now glob those three things together, in chronological order. Three arcs that flow together, the ones after being propelled by the ones before. The Snow Globe arc to introduce us to everyone's favorite robotic planetarium attendant, adorable little Reverie, the Planetarian arc which contains the events of the actual visual novel, and the Hoshi No Hito arc which gives us a touching closure. We start out in the happy prewar world, transitioning into the actual visual novel, and end at Hoshi No Hito. I think you could eek out 12 episodes from this too, maybe if you have a liiiiiitle filler.

But that's just me. Whether or not we have an anime series of Planetarian is totally up to Key and hopefully KyoAni.

But I do hope we do, and I hope I've made a good case for an anime series that should be able to stand very well on its own two feet, just like the Key visual novel-to-anime transitions of the past.