Standing 3 feet away from the developers of a game that you’re writing a preview for and hoping that no one tells them this. You desperately don’t want to converse with them, because the urge to tell them that their game makes you physically ill would be too high*.
*This is not a euphemism–you almost got sick** playing it twice.
** This is a euphemism.
→ 1 CommentTags: Games
It’s about time that I finally wrote something original for this blog–I want to get back into the habit of writing something at least once a week, and cross-posting stuff from my work blog not only doesn’t count, but should be like a minus-one penalty.
I have some pretty odd taste in music, to say the least. Ask anyone who’s really known me, and they’ll tell you this straight up. The fact of the matter is that video games have literally been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and many facets of my life are entirely derived from or revolve around them (I volunteer my personal time to write professional previews/reviews about them for Christ’s sake). Because of my utter fascination with them–something that is entirely mysterious to me to this day but that I know for fact is not at all about escapism as you might imagine–one thing that really stood out to me all throughout my childhood was their music, and that’s stuck with me to this day.
Honestly I’m not really sure what drew me to it so much. My brother, while nostalgic about some of it (though he probably wouldn’t admit this), went through the usual phases of music and eventually mastered the ways of the Pretentious Indie Dick. But me, I never really did. It’s not like I tuned out the rest of the aural world out there–I probably couldn’t name more than a handful of them, but I’ve heard and would recognize most of the greats–but I never really went looking for anything else.
When we got the Internet in high school, I discovered two things: they actually sold video game soundtracks in Japan like proper albums (!), and there was an entire underground community of people that were either like me or shared my seemingly bizarre taste in music. So, on a 56k connection I began my collection of video game soundtracks. Today, I have God knows how many albums (they’re for the most part poorly organized, something I intend to fix but is really tough to find the months of time necessary to do) and a total of 192.59GB of (legally purchased, RIAA) video game music. Some are for games I’ve never played or never intend to play, a lot is encoded in 128kbps, and most I don’t find the time to listen to more than once or twice a year.
I’ve seen Nobuo Uematsu play live at the Dear Friends concert in San Francisco three years ago, and I’ve been to Video Games Live (this year, actually). While I did enjoy those events overall, I’ve come to the sad conclusion that I literally can’t stand the fawning masses that make up the majority of the fandom that go to those types of things on a regular basis. Maybe I’ve just mirrored my brother’s growth and become the king Pretentious Indie Dick of video game music; maybe I just see myself in those kids, even though I was and still am not enough of an extrovert to be like them, and I despise what I see. I don’t really know, though I’ve never really been one for self-loathing so I’m leaning towards Option A–my hatred of Tommy Tallarico for, among other things, turning video game music into a commercialized wank-fest backs that up too.
In the last couple years or so, I’ve done a lot to expand my horizons and taken a strong liking to Indie music. I guess I’m just in the right scene, but I’m fortunate enough to have friends who are big enough into it to know what’s good and I simply trust their recommendations. My co-worker Mindy in particular is big into the concert scene and, although I’ve been out of it for a while and had to flake out on the last couple because of one reason or another, whenever she asks me if I want to go I just say yes–usually without even knowing what I’m getting myself into. For example, I’m going to see Sons and Daughters with her and was later informed by another friend in passing that they were surprised I was into Rockabilly. I am? Whatever, she hasn’t let me down yet and I’m just along for the ride.
→ 1 CommentTags: Music
Earlier tonight I headed down to the Metreon with Ricardo Torres to check out the launch event for Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, and with the power of the media badge he gave me got up close and personal with my camera to take a bunch of photos. The event, which was held in the PlayStation Store, began at 6:00 p.m., and the first lucky 100 in line recieved t-shirts and customized Shinra Corporation ID cards (easily one of the cooler pieces of schwag I’ve seen). We arrived at around 5:40 and by that time, the line already stretched along the building and around one corner down the street.
Click for full-size
The inside of the PlayStation Store was decked out in complete Final Fantasy VII regalia, complete with large speakers that pumped out the Crisis Core soundtrack–which includes a number of iconic songs from the hit classic remixed. At the far side of the store from the entrance was the small booth set up for taking photographs for the Shinra IDs and printing them up, and on the other end of the register area in the corner was a veritable shrine, dedicated to all things FF7. This shrine included a number of original concept art pieces and storyboards used, along with some of the character figures. Flanking this gallery on either side were Cloud and Sephiroth themselves in the form of their pricey Masterpiece Arts figures. Cloud came armed with a couple pieces of his Advent Children sword, the First Tsurugi, and Sephiroth of course had his seven-foot-long (in scale) sword the Masamune.
Click for full-size
And of course, it’s not a Final Fantasy event without the cosplayers. The one outfit that I saw most frequently was the uniform of the Shinra Department of Administrative Research, a.k.a. the Turks. Presumably, this is because all you need to do to be a Turk is wear a black suit and tie with a white shirt. I did catch a Sephiroth, however (he was totally going shirtless under his jacket; must’ve been cold in that wind), and an Advent Children Cloud. They weren’t mock fighting though, and I’m not sure if I can decide if that’s good or bad.
Click for full-size
Of course, there were plenty of copies of the game on-hand for purchase. They even had other, non-Crisis-Core games there for sale, I’m told! If you couldn’t make it down to the Metreon, don’t worry–I’ve got your back. Check my Flickr page for all the photos I took, and whether you were there or not, make sure you read Kevin’s review of the game, watch his video review, and check out GameSpot’s Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII launch center!
→ No CommentsTags: Games
And this is something that I am truly ashamed at admitting. I am very familiar with the game, having become highly interested in it and the other works of mastermind Tetsuya Mizuguchi when I discovered them, but unfortunately, by the time that I did, Rez’s time was long since past and I wasn’t particularly interested in paying an exorbitant fee to buy a copy of the exceedingly rare game.
When I started at GameSpot and discovered that we had a house copy of Rez, I snatched up the game box (the special edition one with the Trance Vibrator, still enshrouded in its velvet casing as God only knows where that’s been–Alex’s pants, perhaps?) and put it on my desk. I’ll admit it was a tad bit for some gamer cred, but mostly because it was something that I’d always wanted to own, but never did. I never did play it though (mostly ’cause I didn’t find the game disc), and when I learned that an HD version was coming out on XBLA, I decided that I would wait to play that version.
Well, today was that day for me–I got to play Rez for the first time. On the final level. With Tetsuya Mizuguchi sitting right next to me. I’m pretty sure that I died in record time, much to everyone’s disappointment, especially my own. He’s a great guy though and took it in stride, and we all joked about how we’d just pretend it didn’t happen.
He showed me how he likes to play with Trance Vibrator support (mind out of the gutter! He puts the controller under the ball of his right foot) and did a quick run-through of Level 2, in which he tried to pass the controller off to me again but I politely declined. He ended up dying at the boss, something he attributed to jet lag, but of course I have no room to judge: I failed almost instantly at perhaps his most famous game because I had never played it before. Needless to say I was a tad bit embarrassed having met one of my idols in such a way, and confessed to having never played it. I suppose I should be lucky that he didn’t simply frown and dismiss me from his presence.
He was on a tight schedule though and had to leave, but I did manage to secure the one thing from him that I had desired most, beyond the opportunity to bask in his presence to see if I couldn’t somehow absorb some of his genius through close proximity:
Yay, I’m one signature closer to my goal of getting all of my heroes’ (the ones who have developed for the Nintendo DS, at least) signatures on my DS! In case you’re wondering, the silver sig on the right is from Mr. Castlevania, Koji Igarashi.
→ 1 CommentTags: Games
Nearly done with the website! So far I’ve made my own custom flickr and Twitter apps, moved the search bar, swapped out categories for tags and a tag cloud, added CAPTCHA anti-spam for comments (and allowed anonymous commenting), made a custom contact form, and re-styled the page.
Things to do:
→ No CommentsTags: General
