Reversal

The primary disadvantage with rarely getting sick is that, when you do get sick, you find yourself unable to put it into the proper perspective. When most people get sick, they probably say “Ugh, this sucks, but there’s nothing I can do about it; I need to get on with life here.” I, on the other hand, haven’t really felt at 100% in about two weeks, and am thus convinced that my death is imminent. And really, do I want to spend my final hours on here babbling incoherently about Zelda or writing Mafia summaries or whatever? Surely not. Far better to spend them on YouTube watching Mario Party videos.

One of my odder hobbies is thinking about bad things and considering whether their badness is intrinsic, or if it’s a question of execution. That is, do they suck because their authors suck, and would therefore be compelling if examined from another angle, or are they just unworkable?

Take Sonic the Hedgehog… specifically Sonic the Hedgehog’s infamous furry drama. Everyone knows that, post-Dreamcast, Sonic’s attempts have been clumsy at best, laughable at worst. However, is that because Sonic’s cast and world just cannot tell a serious story, or is it because Sega’s writers are inept? I don’t think the cast is necessarily an obstacle… for all its other flaws (and they are legion) Sonic Chronicles shows us that Sonic’s Stupid Friends can be tolerable if written competently. I’ve spent an embarrassingly long time trying to dream up a plot for Sonic and Co. that is both non-goofy and non-stupid, but the best one I came up with didn’t use Sonic at all, but rather Sonic analogues. The story would be written in a way that an audience familiar with Sonic would see the parallels, but it would still work as a story on its own merits, rather like Watchmen.

More recently I’ve been pondering whether there’s any way to write a comic that has gender-bending as its main premise but is neither wink-and-nod masturbatory fodder for transformation fetishists nor a serious examination of real-life transvestism. Transformation comics are hardly rare, and even non-transformation comics like to dip into the well, but they’re a lot like furry comics in that the subject is so charged with preconceptions that you can’t write one without being accused of either writing with one hand or dog-whistling for those who do. Is that inherent, I wonder. Could you write a comic that has gender bending as a theme or a plot element and just have it be there, present but not an object of particular focus, without letting it dominate either the work or the discussion/fandom of the work?

I’ve got a couple of ideas, but the problem is that most of them are just normal stories that have the transformation… well, “shoehorned in” is probably an exaggeration, but certainly as not a necessary element of the story. For example, one idea was a fantasy/adventure story where the main character is under a curse which reversed his gender — but in the world the story takes place in, you can only be under one curse at a time, so he’s recruited into an organization that operates in high-magic areas (analogous to how plague survivors were sometime press-ganged into working in areas where the plague had struck). The other major characters would also be cursed, and not all of them would be transformed, so the gender bender fits into the story without being the primary focus.

Problem is, I thought of a few plot holes just writing that. First, why gender-bending? I mean, why not dream up a curse that says “You can no longer say the word ‘manscaping'” and put it on everyone? Curse problem solved, and you don’t need to recruit victims anymore. Plus, while the gender bending is no longer central, that in itself presents a problem — if it’s not central, why use it? You’d just get accused of having a TG fetish again; it would just be more circumspect. You’d have to make the main character’s adjustment to his new state central to the narrative, but then you’re right back to “metaphor for real-life TG/TV” again, which has its own issues.

…So yeah, that’s what I’ve been thinking about recently. Tell the world my story.

Dimensional Turn

A bunch of stuff about the 3DS was released today, including price point and drop date.

I won’t be getting it. At least, not right away.

For one thing, the launch lineup looks pretty sorry. There’s not a single game on the list that makes me say “OMG MUST HAVE”. Really, if I bought a 3DS at launch it would be for Shantae: Risky’s Revenge, which isn’t even a 3DS game.

Now, there is some stuff coming down the pike that looks more up my alley… ports of Ocarina of Time and Star Fox 64, which are two of my favorite games. Ports of Metal Gear Solid 3 and Tales of the Abyss, which I’ve wanted to play but don’t have access to. New turn-based Paper Mario, which is pretty much a system seller all by its lonesome. The Kid Icarus game looks sufficiently Sin & Punishment-esque that I figure I’d enjoy it. Plus I’m certain that 3DS will eventually be the place to be for new Pokemon, Fire Emblem, Mario, and Zelda, which means that I won’t be able to just pass it up.

Problem is, though, that all of this stuff is in the generic “Eventually” release frame. I’m not a technology whore, so I’m not interested in the 3DS (or any other system) just on the merits of its technical innovations. I’m not concerned with new 3-D stuff or tag features. There actually needs to be a list of software that grabs me before I’m willing to take the plunge. Game Boy Virtual Console won’t be ready at launch, and I’m struggling to think of any old GB games that I absolutely need anyway. The Oracle games, I guess? My Link’s Awakening cart is still in perfect working condition.

So, no 3DS for me right off the bat. Wake me up when Ocarina 3D gets a release date.

10 for ’10: Sin & Punishment: Star Successor

Sin & Punishment: Star Successor

Developer: Treasure

Publisher: Nintendo

U.S. Release Date: June 27, 2010

Genre: Rail Shooter

Sin & Punishment: Star Successor is a bit of an odd bird in that it’s a game I love despite consisting entirely of stuff I generally hate. It’s a shooter, and I normally hate shooters. It’s a twitch game, and I normally hate twitch games. It’s entirely autoscrolling, and God do I hate autoscrolling. It’s even got a bizarre animesque story, which I find I have less and less patience for with each passing day.

And yet, none of those elements ruins the game for me. In fact, I probably had more fun with this game than any I played this year. It’s an incredibly intense and action-packed thrill ride, but it never throws so much at you that it becomes difficult to adjust, which is the main problem I have with most twitchy games. Moreover, the Wii controls were made for this kind of game. It’s amazing there aren’t more games of this type on Wii, because they’re perfectly suited for the system (and perfectly unsuited for standard controllers, as the original Sin & Punishment for the N64 demonstrates). Moving and aiming are completely separate functions, which makes things a lot more intuitive and user-friendly (unlike most other games where they’re interrelated).

There’s also a lot of flexibility in how you want to play. In addition to the standard difficulty levels (which add new attacks and enemy patterns as you go up the chain), you’ve also got two different characters who handle differently despite playing the same basic game. Isa has stronger basic shots, but has to lock on to enemies manually, and his shots become weaker if he does. His charged shot is an explosion which is great at clearing a room, but isn’t as strong versus bosses. Kachi has weaker shots, but she locks on automatically, and doesn’t lose any power when she does so. Her charged shot takes longer to charge and to cool down, but it’s a spray of homing missiles that can target up to eight foes and is a lot more flexible than Isa’s. In addition, beating the game a few times unlocks bonus modes — in Isa and Kachi mode, you can switch between characters with the press of a button, and beating the game in that mode allows each character to use the other’s aiming mechanics.

The story isn’t quite as ludicrous as the original S&P’s, but it’s still pretty bizarre — especially the bosses, who range from strange to out-and-out insane. There are a lot of bosses, though — the game never lets up, and you’re never doing the same thing twice.

I’ve only got a few complaints. One is that there are a few depth issues — it’s difficult to tell if some shots are close enough to damage or reflect in some situations. The other is that the game is really too long to play in one sitting — but the game doesn’t save your score if you save and quit. This makes score attacks problematic to schedule. Really, Treasure? Not even a quicksave?

Still, those are minor complaints, through and through. An absolute masterpiece of a game — and coming from me, the hates-shooters guy, that’s saying something.

And I believe that’s ten! Not a bad series, I think, even if it took longer than I expected.

Cue the Sun

Another post-midnight post… but I have an excuse this time! Around 2 pm this afternoon, when I was trawling for subjects to write about, my internet sputtered out on me. I didn’t like it any more than you did, but hey, I can’t help what I can’t help.

I spent the downtime playing Okami instead. I bought the Wii version about two years ago, a few months after first getting my Wii. I played about two hours of it, then got distracted and replayed Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance again, then got partway through a second playthrough of Radiant Dawn, and by that point I was buying other games and had relegated Okami to the backburner. It was on my to-do list for most of last year, but I was never in the mood to pick it up again. In all seriousness, I made more progress in this one evening than I have in the whole other two years the game’s been in my possession.

I feel a little guilty about that, really, because the game seems fine, at least from what little I’ve played with it. It’s basically Zelda, except with Japanese mythology and a spiffier art style, and I love me some Zelda. I’m told that the game drags in its latter stages, being about twice as long as it needs to be, but… I’m not there yet, so I can’t comment.

Wii-mote controls seem clumsy, though. I must not have the hang of the Celestrial Brush strokes yet, because whether or not the game is registering my skills seems essentially random — especially with regards to reviving trees. Drawing circles seems harder than it needs to be. Combat is also finnicky… you can’t just waggle like a maniac, which is what I’m used to doing in games that require waggle. There’s a rhythm there, or else Amaterasu just kind of stands there and stares blankly. I must practice more.

My word is this game slow, though. It seems bizarre to me that people can chastise Twilight Princess for its overlong introductory sequences while still embracing this game. Talk about holding your hand! And it wouldn’t be so bad, except that dialogue takes approximately two years per line to spit out, complete with Banjo-Kazooie-esque “bleh bleh bleh” faux-voice acting. I could have learned acupuncture in the time it took for Issun and Sakuya to tell me what’s what with the evil juju infecting the Japanese countryside, and the camerawork tends to give away all the puzzle solutions with long, lingering shots. Maybe this is just a consequence of the tutorial section of the game. I hope so.

Art style is charming and unique, of course. Passing back and forth between this game and Kirby’s Epic Yarn (as I plan to do if/when I get burnt out on Okami) should be easy on the eyes, if nothing else.

Super Mario Bros. Crossover Characters… Ranked

Super Mario Bros. Crossover has quickly become one of my favorite games. The ability to choose between seven other 8-bit icons breathes new life into this old classic.

But not all characters are created equal. Here’s a ranking of the eight in terms of how well-suited they are to the levels and how fun they are to play — at least as far as I’m concerned.

8) Mario

Sorry, big guy. It might be your game, but you’re not the star of the show this time. Mario’s fireballs are still the strongest power-up in the game, and he’s the fastest character on land, but my word is he boring. If you wanted to play vanilla Mario Bros., you can get it from any number of sources. No, if you seek out Super Mario Bros. Crossover, it means you want to play as the other guys.

I still use him on the Cheep Cheep stages (2-3 and 7-3), though, where speed is paramount and extra abilities are near useless.

7) Mega Man

I liked Mega Man more in the first version of the game, where he had doubled jumping to compensate for his weak jump height in his own games. The revisions of the game reverted his jumps back to standard but gave him Rush Coil to compensate, but that’s not a fair trade as far as I’m concerned. In a game like Mario Bros., you need to be able to make your jumps on demand, and that extra second it takes for Mega Man to jump a slightly-too-high pipe is murderous.

His pellets are also pretty weak, although his charged shots can rip through the stages. He’s also got a slide, but I forget it’s there half the time. Megs is best used on stages that are thick with enemies but thin on tough jumps, like most of World 3.

6) Ryu Hayabusa

Man, this guy looked absolutely dominating in his debut trailer, scurrying all over the levels with his wall-clinging ability and shredding enemies with his whirling shurikens. What a disappointment.

So what went wrong? The problem is damage. If you want to damage enemies with Ryu, you’ve got your choice of short-range katana with a crappy damage rate, long-range shurikens with crappier damage rate, or (with a power-up) pinwheel shuriken with decent damage, but which is difficult to control. The trailer shows the pinwheel shuriken destroying levels and taking out whole rows of levels, but these shots are pretty painstakingly choreographed. Even at Fire Flower level Ryu requires three or four hits to take out even the lowliest enemies, and forget about taking down Bowser in a far fight. Ryu is perhaps the only character for whom stomping enemies is a more effective offense than using his native weaponry.

But okay, Ryu’s a ninja. He’s not supposed to be facing his enemies head-on — he’s intended to sneak around, climb walls, and evade them. For a ninja, though, he feels kind of slow (playing him on the Cheep Cheep stages is absolutely painful, because he can take a hit at any time), his hitbox is large, and his jumps are pretty squirrelly. It’s a good thing he’s got the wall cling because he can’t make many of the jumps otherwise. Playing Ryu is fun in the indoor stages where there’s lots of stuff to climb on, but keep him away from bad guys.

5) Bill Rizer (aka The Contra Guy)

What? Bill R., all the way down here? Has Tanto gone insane?

Apparently. Common consensus is that Bill R. is ludicrously overpowered and the strongest character in the game, but I’ve never been a big fan, for three reasons:

1. Crap jumps. See Ryu re: “squirrelly”.
2. He’s a pretty bad character without his Fire Flower power-up, the Spread Gun. The Spread Gun is pretty dominating, I’m forced to concede, but without it he’s stuck with a pea shooter that can only shoot in one direction at once, has a pretty low damage rate, and requires ducking to hit one-frame enemies like the omnipresent Goombas.
3. He’s only good in certain levels. He annihilates underground levels, Lakitu levels, and levels with lots of enemies… but his huge frame and imprecise jumps make him a poor choice for the outdoor “athletic” levels and the castles. (Which, I hasten to remind you, comprise half the game.) I just don’t think a character who is only fun half the time can really be the best character in the game.

4) Simon Belmont

Simon is kind of like the anti-Mega Man. Where Mega Man was fun in the first version but nerfed on revisions in order to make him more accurate to the source, Simon started out source-accurate and was a terrible character, but became both better and more fun when his strict Belmont jumping was relaxed in the updates.

Simon’s a pretty versatile character, these days… his weapons (whip and axe) allow him to attack from a variety of angles and at range, while his double jump makes him a pretty solid platformer character as well. I’ll never go out of my way to pick Simon, but I’m never disatisfied when random mode hands him to me.

3) Sophia the 3rd

The new girl on the block is the tank Sophia the 3rd from Blaster Master, complete with aimable shots, homing missiles, wall and ceiling cling, hovering, and a separate underwater mode (the only character besides Mario to have one). Unlike Ryu, Sophia easily lived up to her trailer billing, and is able to effortlessly dominate any stage in the game with her versatile skills.

…But then, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Sophia’s so powerful that it kind of feels like cheating. Sophia surgically extracts anything remotely resembling challenge from the game. The other characters have powers, but they compensate somewhat by having quirks or drawbacks that you have to get used to in order to use them at full effectiveness, so the game is still challenging. That’s not so with Sophia.

Also, I think Sophia has the worst selection of music in the game. And not being able to open blocks by jumping is very annoying.

2) Samus Aran

Samus Aran doesn’t have any frills in this game — she’s just another “run, jump, shoot” character. She’s got the Morph Ball and Bombs, but they’re near-useless. In the most recent update she gained Missiles, but since she loses her entire stock whenever she dies, you can’t count on having them. She doesn’t have anything cool to fall back on like double jumps, wall climbing, or hovering.

No, I like Samus because her floaty physics seem extremely well-paced for Mario, and her high jump is borderline game-breaking. I’m also a huge fan of the way her gun stuns most enemies — with someone like Mega Man or Bill, you usually have to fire off two or three shots, then back off a few steps and finish the job, because the enemy is still coming while they’re firing. Samus doesn’t have that problem, because her gun stops foes in their tracks. You hardly ever have to stop (which is good because Samus is a fairly slow runner). I dunno, it just seems like Samus is closest to being the ideal run/jump/shoot character without going over.

1) Link

To all those people who think Link should become Zelda 2 Link whenever he picks up a Mushroom… no fucking way. Link is great just the way he is. He’s the smallest character other than small Mario (who you basically never want to be), which means he sneaks into the small spaces easily and has the best hitbox.

Link doesn’t jump at all in his home game, so it’s a bit odd that in SMBC he has the tightest and most precise jumps in the game. None of this spinning somersault nonsense that Ryu, Bill, and Samus have to deal with, and he doesn’t even have to build up speed like Mario. Short of a hover-abusing Sophia, Link is the character for precision platforming in this game.

His tools are also great — the upward and downward thrusts from his sword are abusive, and the boomerang is useful in a wide variety of situations, from collecting coins and too-high up Fire Flowers to stunning Hammer Bros. Link is perfectly balanced for almost every single stage, is by far the easiest solo game (at least short of Sophia, again), and is the most useful character on the harder difficulties. In short, Link is great and everyone should play as him forever. The end.

The Golden Guild: Catfish Hunting

I’ve been playing more Etrian Odyssey III as of late, which means more adventures of the Dorato Guild. I’ll hand you over once again to Dorato’s de facto leader, the bewildered princess Megaera…

The Golden Guild: Catfish Hunting

That could have gone better, I thought to myself as I surveyed my battered charges.

It had seemed simple at first. The Dorato Guild had mapped out the first stratum with such speed and accuracy that the Senatus had assigned us the task of killing the great beast Narmer, which lurked in a swamp on the final floor of the stratum, blocking the passage to the second stratum. I hadn’t expected it to be much of a problem — aside from a mishap with a Great Lynx from which Nezu was still recovering, we hadn’t had much trouble defeating the wildlife that attacked us as we explored. We’d evaded the F.O.E.s, of course, but I had no way of knowing just how strong Narmer would turn out to be. The creature was immense, and seemed to shrug off attacks that would hamper the weaker creatures that surrounded his lair.

Well, my beaten guildmates gave the lie to that particular bit of arrogance on my part. Phoebe was uninjured, but her armor was dented and spattered with mud from the enormous fish’s wild flailing, and there was an enormous rent in her shield. My heart had nearly leapt out of my chest when I saw my cousin stumble to her knees, blinded by the muck that Narmer seemed to spray at random, but she seemed unharmed, as steady and as confident as ever.

Tristan wasn’t in nearly as good a shape. He was unconscious, and Phoebe and I had been forced to manhandle him away from the battle while Anja covered us. I was always a bit shocked that such a measured, educated-sounding man could fight like such a berserker, and he’d been especially reckless against the massive fish, taking a gruesome-looking bite to the side and a nasty blow to the ribs. Currently Jin knelt over his prone form, her knowing smile gone for once as she tended to him, soft white light swirling around his injuries.

It was only lucky that the creature had spooked and retreated, giving us a chance to regroup, but its crazed howl as it had done so had awakened a swarm of enormous insects, which now patrolled Narmer’s swamp while the beast itself wallowed in the corner, licking its wounds. We’d managed to slip into one of the narrow passages that lined Narmer’s lair to lick our own. The entrances were too small for anything larger than a human to follow us, but Anja watched them just the same, ready to raise the alarm if one of the F.O.Es tried to force it. The young arbalist had put on a brave face, but her expression was tight and her complexion pale, so I could tell that she was terrified. I didn’t blame her. Our situation was not enviable.

I sighed. “Well, that didn’t work out so well, did it?” I said to Phoebe, my only guildmate who wasn’t otherwise occupied.

“It could have been much worse, Princess,” she said seriously. She’d washed her face with water from a nearby stream, but her hair was still limp and dirty from the mud. “We’re all still alive, and — except for him — we’re all still mobile.” She turned away. “A couple of wrong turns and we could all be dead.”

I didn’t want to think about that. “How is he?” I asked Jin.

“He’s not in any immediate danger,” she said, her voice surprisingly weary. I was used to Jin always being energetic and in control, so it disturbed me to hear her so beaten down. “I’ve stitched up his cut, so he won’t bleed out. If we gave him a couple of weeks he’d heal on his own. That’s what I’m doing right now, actually — I’m giving him some of my qi to accelerate his natural healing process.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

“No,” she sighed. “He just needs rest. We all do, really. I can still fight, but after fixing up him I won’t be in any condition to heal anymore.”

That was encouraging. The last thing I needed was a corpse on my conscience. I decided to save my self-recrimination for later. “What should we do next?”

Phoebe grunted. “Isn’t it obvious? Back to town. We can’t finish off Narmer in our current state. We’ve still got some Ariadne Thread, right?”

“No,” said Jin with surprising heat. “We have to finish the job. In the time it would take us to get back to town, rest back to full strength, and then make our way back down here, Narmer will have recovered. We’ll never have a better chance to kill him than right now, and we won’t be able to proceed any further until we do.” She looked directly at me. “If we don’t finish this now, we might as well dissolve the guild right now and go our separate ways, because we won’t be able to go any further.”

“I agree,” Tristan muttered sleepily.

“He’s awake!” I said.

“Obviously,” Jin said coolly. Then, to Tristan, she said, “Shut up. You need all the strength you can get right now, so don’t waste it talking.”

“That’s all very well and good,” Phoebe said, “but he can barely stand, much less fight. You can talk all you want about ‘finishing the job,’ but it would cost us our lives. We simply can’t finish off Narmer and a room full of lesser F.O.Es in this condition.”

“We may not have to,” Anja said suddenly from her post by the entrance. “Princess Megaera, you might want to take a look at this.”

The blonde archer stepped aside, allowing me a view of the swamp. My eye was drawn immediately to our mark, Narmer, who lounged in a pool of mud in one of the opposite corners, moaning bestially. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around a creature that large. Its slick body writhed inhumanly, and I could see that several of Anja’s arrows still stuck out of it. It didn’t appear to be in any hurry to move.

Also skittering back and forth across the swamp were the hideous Bog Dwellers, which had erupted from the muck the moment Narmer had raised the alarm. The insects weren’t as large as their master, but their ugly-looking claws and proboses didn’t look as though they’d be fun to fight.

“I think they’re blind,” Anja said.

“What?”

“The Bog Dwellers,” she answered. “I don’t think their senses are very good. They’re not going to Narmer’s aid or trying to follow our trail. They’re just patrolling back and forth.” She pursed her lips, absorbed in this new puzzle. “It makes sense if you think about it, though. Those things live in the mud — they’re not designed to hunt prey in the open air. This is just a guess, but I don’t think they’ll chase us, or help Narmer if we were to attack him. As long as we stay out of their way, they shouldn’t bother us.”

“Hm.” Anja was young, but I was learning to trust her instincts. She’d been the hero during our first fight with Narmer, dealing more damage than the rest of us combined. When Narmer had tried to dive into the mud, her quick thinking had saved us — a spray of arrows revealed the creature before it had a chance to ambush us. I pulled out the map of this floor and examined it, trying to envision the Dwellers’ movements.

If Anja was right, we should be able to sneak around through the side passages and get the jump on Narmer again without running afoul of the lesser F.O.E.s. Moreover…

“We’ve still got those tents, right” I asked.

“What? Yeah, I think so,” said Phoebe, clearly baffled.

“Okay, then, here’s the plan,” I said. “We’ll backtrack to the campsite not far from here and rest as long as we dare. Once Tristan and Jin are in good enough condition to fight, we’ll come back here and finish off Narmer. I don’t think the Bog Dwellers will attack us if we position ourselves properly, and Jin’s right — we’ll never have a better chance to finish Narmer than right now.”

I stood up. “Phoebe, you and I will take the point. Tristan, you’re in the middle — hang back unless our situation is desparate. Anja, you stay close to him in case he needs help walking. Jin, you bring up the rear, and let us know if anything’s following us. We avoid fights if we can. Any problems?” There was silence in the tunnel. “Let’s go, then.”

The Gen V Pokemon Awards Show

So it looks like the English names for all the new Generation V Pokemon have been leaked. It’s not confirmed yet, but the list lines up with new Pokemon being released through official channels and it’s been mysteriously disappearing from various websites, which speaks to its veracity. So that means it’s time to examine how they did!

“Best Pun” Award

Generation V’s a great one for punny names. The Pokemon universe runs out puns, but the Gen V translators have gone above and beyond the call of duty. For a while there I was sure that Krookodile would take it, but then I had the names of the alien Pokemon based off the Area 51 mythology explained to me, so the winners are Elgyem and its evolution Beheeyem.

Don’t get it? The secret is abbreviations! Elgyem –> LGM –> Little Green Men. Beheeyem –> BEM –> Bug-Eyed Monster. Yeah, you can slap your forehead now.

Best Portmaneau

Braviary. It would take a mighty fine name to make me call this hilariously patriotic Pokemon anything other than “Wargle” (its Japanese name), but the translators rose to the challenge.

“I Will Never Call This Pokemon By This Name” Award

Scraggy and its evolution Scrafty. Not because I dislike the names or because I think the Japanese name is better or anything, but because these Pokemon will be forever be known to me as PANTLIZARD.

No, Pantlizard! You'll make the Baby Jesus cry!

Most Likely to Become an Internet Meme

#624… Whenever an internet poster gets in over his head on a message board, he will find himself face to face with this ghostly golem, the assertion that he should read more and post less left hanging in the air unspoken. That person will then curse his luck, knowing that he has been commanded to…

GO LURK

GOLURK.

(As an aside, it amuses the hell out of me that we’ve got something like seven million golem Pokemon at this point, but the Pokemon actually named Golem isn’t one of them. Oh, Gen I.)

Laziest Name

Obviously, all the Pokemon that kept their Japanese names are disqualified for this one. The easy winner here is Litwick.

Yep, he’s a wick all right. And he’s certainly lit. Let’s call him Litwick. That’s enough work for one day; I’m clocking out.

If we’d had this quality of effort in Gen I we’d all be breeding for shiny Lizardwithitsassonfires and Mousethatshitslightnings.

Most Egregious Misspelling

Let’s take a journey back in time, you and I. Specifically, a journey all the way back to the halcyon days of 1998, when the first Generation of Pokemon were receiving their English names. One of those original Pokemon was a mystical bird who lived alone in a frozen island and embodied the power of frost, one of the trio of powerful legendary birds.

As the most famous and iconic Pokemon, Game Freak has in recent years attempted to give legendary Pokemon names that translate between regions with a minimum of fuss, as an attempt to prevent the dilution of the brand… but Generation I predates all that is good and logical, and the three legendary birds were given the Engrishy names of Freezer, Thunder, and Flame instead. Obviously these had to be changed, and the solution the translators settled upon was to combine a word derived from their element with a Spanish number. The glowing phoenix became Moltres. The screeching bird of lightning became Zapdos. And the elegant ice bird became… Articuno.

Now, the thing everyone noticed right off was that “arctic” is spelled with two “c”s. Having letters truncated from your name isn’t common in Poke-dom, but it happens sometimes. (Don’t ask Feraligatr about the process.) But “Articuno” isn’t close to running up against the ten-letter limit, so its missing “c” was an intriguing puzzle. We chalked it up as a mystery and moved on with our lives.

Fast forward thirteen years. The “arctic” naming scheme has lain dormant that whole time, until we come to a hulking polar bear with an ice beard. This is incredibly badass, and deserves an equally badass name. So the translators came up with…

…Beartic.

Okay, that name sucks, but that’s not even the point here. They did it again! Thirteen years and five hundred monsters later and they fucking did it again! What does Game Freak have against properly spelling the word “arctic”? Is their spellcheck broken? What, did that first “c” sleep with somebody’s mom or something? It’s okay, Pokemon translators. You can open up to us.

Most Palindromic

Alomomola. Luckily its name is the only palindromic thing about it, so Girafarig’s title as the most palindromic Pokemon of all is still safe.

“Should Have Kept the Japanese Name” Award

Rufflet. Not that it’s a bad name or anything, but the Japanese name is “Washibon”. I can think of no better tribute to our first and arguably greatest president than naming an imaginary baby eagle after him.

“Thank God They Didn’t Keep the Japanese Name” Award

Klink, known in its native country by the extremely creative moniker of “Gear”.

Metal Gear!?

Best Use of a Foreign Language in an English Pokemon Name

The Dark/Dragon line of pseudo-legendaries… Deino, Zweilous, and Hydreigon. Each new evolution adds an additional head, you see.

“How the Hell Do I Pronounce That?” Award

Cofagrigus. I guess “Deathkhan” was too badass for them.

Just call me "Tut".

“They’re Just Trolling Us At This Point” Award

What’s the name they decided to give a Dragon-type with a ludicrous 147 base Attack, 97 Speed, and the Mold Breaker ability, a Pokemon destined to be popular among the persnicketty online tournament community?

Haxorus.

Best Pop Culture Reference

Foongus and its evolution Amoonguss, the mushroom Pokemon.

I kind of like Incubus’s later work more, though… I can’t wait for Acrow and its evolution Leftofthemurder.

Most Likely To Be Coopted Into Being a Boston Red Sox Mascot

Sawk. Seriously, I need to see this guy on a sign at Fenway Park this season, or I’ll lose all faith in humanity.

Most Delicious-Sounding Name

Vanilluxe. Yum.

"We took on the appearance of a delicious treat as a survival mechanism, master!"

And finally

Top Ten Generation V Pokemon Names, In No Particular Order

1. Galvantula
2. Braviary
3. Purrloin
4. Serperior
5. Reuniclus
6. Tynamo
7. Fraxure
8. Pawniard
9. Lilligant
10. Blitzle

Sorta Odd ThoughtBusters

MythBusters is a good show, a fun show. The hosts are funny and the show is usually good about creating an entertaining spectacle. But there’s no denying that they’ve kind of drifted away from their original purpose over the last several seasons.

The original premise of the show was to test the veracity of various recurring urban legends. Quicksand? Pop rocks and cola? Guy gets electrocuted after peeing on an electrified rail? Check, check, and check. Every couple of episodes we’d get a big explosion and everything was good.

This isn’t a bottomless well, though. It took them about three seasons to completely run out of real myths, which meant they had to start improvising. At this point, the show become more “can this crazy scene from an Action Movie/YouTube Video really happen“, with an occasional idiom or physics thought experiment on the side. This was fine too, even if you had to squint a little more — the argument could be made that YouTube is urban legends for a new generation (although half the videos the MythBusters have tested were flat-out admitted by their creators to be staged). The “extreme engineering” aspect of the show became more prominent, and you got episodes that had no real myth but featured the MythBusters making cannons and boats out of duct tape, and that was nearly as cool, so okay.

I’ve got to draw the line, however, at the episodes that are badly-concealed commercials for other people’s shows. I’m thinking, specifically, of the recent Storm Chasers and Green Hornet episode, which featured the Storm Chasers and Seth Rogan respectively as special guests. I don’t know, you guys, this seems awfully commercial… the exploding cement mixer is timeless, but an episode about some random Seth Rogan vehicle that no one will remember a year from now doesn’t promise to rerun well. The Storm Chaser episode didn’t even include any myths — it was just “Can the Storm Chasers’ vehicle, which is specifically designed to withstand heavy storms, really withstand heavy storms?” No fucking shit, Sherlock.

This first started up as early as the baseball episode, which was pretty awful (and featured Roger Clemens as a special guest — little wonder that particular masterpiece isn’t showing up in reruns). It’s not really very compelling television, though — Adam and Jamie are fun enough characters on their own without having to force chemistry with random actors who have a new movie to pimp. I certainly hope this isn’t a trend — wouldn’t it suck for MythBusters to just become another stop on the action movie press tour? Leno, Letterman, MythBusters? No way.

I can deal with definition drift as long as the show is still fun to watch — but enough with the B-listers, MythBusters. You’re better than this.

Super Talking Time Bros.: Impressions

I played some of this game today! Here are some random thoughts:

1) The more I play around with Super Mario Bros. X (the engine the game was made in), the less I like it. It feels really off-model and not quite right. The physics of Mario and the enemies are just a touch off in most places, and that’s enough to throw me off.

2) On a related note, this probably wasn’t fair of me, but I was kind of expecting everyone else to recognize how crappy Springs and Note Blocks are in this engine and refuse to use them, as I did. They don’t work anywhere close to the way they do in real Mario games, and that’s really annoying.

3) As I’d anticipated, the game is kind of random and disconnected, the varying authors far too evident. Any number of the levels seem to exist merely to say “Look what we can do!” I’m not sure how many Ice Flower levels one game needs, but I’m nearly certain it’s less than what we’ve got. Even NSMBWii, the game that introduced this version of the Ice Flower, doesn’t have any levels that need it. It’s just helpful to have, and if you lose it, no biggy.

4) A couple of the levels have blocks and platforms positioned just awkwardly enough to annoy. This probably could have used more testing. (I’m thinking specifically of the secret star in Pipe Dreamin’, which requires extreme, annoying precision.) Even one of my levels has a couple broken places — but that’s because a beta version was included in the game instead of the corrected version that I posted not five posts later. [/bitterness]

5) I’ll probably get some argument here, but I think there are probably too many secret stars. The best analogue to the secret stars in this game are probably the secret exits in Super Mario World, and those are pretty spread out — probably no more than a third of the levels have a secret exit in that game. In this game, it seems like almost all of them do. For me at least, a lot of the triumph of beating a level is lost if I have to head right back in and start searching for P-Switches and out-of-the-way vines. Moreover, in World, the secret exits have the extra motivation of opening up shortcuts, which they don’t do here. You don’t get your reward for diligent star-searching until the end. I want more carrot, less stick.

I think a solid majority of the levels should be straightforward run-from-left-to-right affairs, and only the most clever and interesting secret stars should be retained. 2-D games simply lack the ability to create expansive playgrounds, and that’s where the multiple-stars-per-level setup shines. Keep the forward momentum going and let short-term victories count for more.

6) Difficulty seems fair so far, at least compared to standard-issue ludicrous romhack difficulty. I’d like to see how someone with little to no Mario experience responded to it, but what are the odds of that happening?

7) I don’t envy the person who has to Let’s Play the game and explain all the ridiculous Talking Time in-jokes.

Needless to say, I gots opinions about how the sequel should be done, if it ever comes to fruition. But that’s for another time, I guess.

A Touch Late

Yeah, yeah, I know. Still, I’m posting this during the period of wakefulness which primarily fell on January 11th, 2o11, so I’m counting it as that post. As long as I’ve got a shiny “31” next to January at the end of the month I doubt anyone will much care the exact hour they were posted. (I know I won’t.) I’ll still make the 12th’s regularly scheduled post, so don’t fret — you’ll still get your fill of my pointless meanderings.

I ate breakfast every day, like clockwork, for most of my life. Usually that breakfast was cereal, and I became quite the connoissuer of empty sugar. In college, though, I mostly gave it up, for two reasons. First, I was trying to get as much sleep as I could possibly manage during those days, so I usually spent my mornings making sure I didn’t exude any socially unacceptable smells rather than eating. The other was that, around age 20, I mysteriously began feeling sick to my stomach if I ate anything before around 11 am, so I simply stopped doing so.

I hadn’t forgotten my love of cereal, though, and discovered its usefulness as a midnight snack a few years later. I’d been struck by one of those mysterious midnight cravings and took apart the kitchen in search of something to eat. The only thing I found was a pile of single-serving boxes of cereal my sister had brought back with her when she’d gone on vacation with her friends a few weeks earlier. Desperate, I cracked one and ate it — and a new snack food was born. I still don’t eat breakfast anymore — old habits die hard — but cereal has become a staple of my diet again, each month rediscovering an old treat from my childhood. Lucky Charms. Cocoa Pebbles. Just last month I reminded myself how entirely awesome Apple Cinnamon Cheerios are for the first time in years.

I wonder how many other people eat their meals in reverse, starting off with the most substantial one and polishing off with cereal in milk before going to bed. Which is where I’ll go now, if you don’t mind. Tomorrow: Super Talking Time Bros. thoughts! Or maybe MythBusters thoughts. We’ll see what mood takes me.