Thursday, September 16, 2004

Why Des Dislikes Dubbing

	I've painfully reminded myself why I prefer subtitles over dubbing in anime. Last night I finished watching the sixth season of Ranma ½, and afterwards, I decided to go back and watch one of the episodes with the dubbed English voices instead of the original Japanese, while leaving the subtitles on. So I picked my favorite episode out of the ones I had just watched (episode 15), telling myself I was going to sit through the entire thing, even if it was bad, just to see what it was like. And I did it ... but now I wish I hadn't. As I sat there, cringing at the cheesy dialogue spoken by horrible voice actors that did not fit the characters at all compared to the Japanese voices, I watched in horror as all enjoyment of the episode was sucked away by the horrible dubbing. What had been probably my favorite episode of the season had suddenly become utterly unenjoyable. I mean, not only was the voice acting bad, but they also changed a lot of lines from the subtitle translation for seemingly no reason, and the changes were never for the better with the exception of maybe one or two. It was just plain bad. With that said, I'll be sticking with the Japanese voices and subtitles for the rest of the series. Anymore, reading the subtitles in anime has become just as natural as listening to speech, so I don't even really notice it anymore. I hear the Japanese, I read the English, and it's pretty much just like I'm understanding the Japanese speech and translating it in my mind to comprehend what's being said, without even thinking about it. And I'm a pretty fast reader, so I barely ever have issues with keeping up with the speech. (Heck, I watched most of Excel Saga with subtitles and I was rarely unable to keep up, so I doubt much else is going to give me trouble.) And that's why I prefer subtitles. So, I shall now await the piles of flaming comments from all the people who prefer dubbing. Have fun.

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Sunday, September 12, 2004

Now Playing #57

	Anime: Oh My Goddess! Track: My Heart, Your Heart Time: 4:14 Size: 50.6 KB I probably would've put this up sooner if I hadn't been lazy about finding a decent midi version of this song, but whatever. My Heart, Your Heart is the opening theme for the short, five episode Oh My Goddess! series, which happens to be my current favorite anime. And whenever I listen to this song, I think of the intro movie that goes with it -- the clip where Urd is flying on a vaccum cleaner. That bit never fails to make me laugh. - - - - - - - - - - - - - 230? WTF? I beat Super Metroid yesterday ... twice. Once, getting an item collection rate of 99%, making me wonder what the heck I missed. So I looked around on my map for any areas that were missing, but everything looked in order. And then it hit me: That one, stupid missile tank in Kraid's little area of Brinstar that you need power bombs to get to. I always forget to come back for that one after I get power bombs down in Norfair, before heading up to the Wrecked Ship. So after going through Tourian, kicking Mother Brain's ass, and beating the game, I had to go back for that missile tank. And then, since I'm anal like that, I had to go beat the game again to get the 100% rating. For going all that way (from Tourian to the end of Brinstar and back), though, I only added four minutes to my game clear time. First time, it was 3:33, second time it was 3:37; I was hauling ass to and from that missile tank and all through Tourian, heh. Not that I'm complaining, though; fighting Mother Brain is fun. You get to unload nearly everything you've got on the thing before it goes down. ... Well, I suppose it doesn't go down, but anyone that's won that fight will know what I mean. I think I only missed with two super missiles and maybe three or four normal missiles (my usual accuracy for that fight), and I was down to only about 25 missiles left when it drained all my weapons. And after that, just because I'm a biatch, I shot it some more with charged up Plasma Beam shots. Really, the fight follows a pretty simply pattern, so it's not that hard if you have enough missiles and you don't miss a lot. But what makes it so fun for me is trying to keep a constant stream of fire hitting the thing while still dodging its attacks. I think I only lost about 100 or 150 energy, either time I fought it (during the first part of the fight, that is), heh. Not to brag, but I think I've become quite the badass in that game. Basically, how the fight would go, is I'd stand towards the right side of the room and aim diagonally up at Mother Brain's head. And any time it wasn't attacking, I'd be keeping up a constant stream of super missiles (and then normal missiles once my super missiles were depleted) going from my gun to its head, firing as fast as I could. When it would drop a bomb onto the floor, I'd dodge it and resume my firing, waiting for the right moment to jump over the explosion it would shortly be sending along the ground. Mother Brain would then usually shoot one of its two normal beam attacks at me, and I'd time my jump so that I'd jump over the beam attack, shoot Mother Brain with another super missile while in the air, and land just after the bomb had gone off along the floor. And then continue firing, of course. When Mother Brain starts speeding up its attacks, and especially during the second half of the fight, trying to keep up a steady stream of fire (that actually hits it) while avoiding its attacks gets to be really hectic and lots of fun; it's definitely my favorite fight in the game. Also, Ridley is fun to fight, but he just doesn't last long enough. With him, by the time I unload my super missiles, he's already dead and I'm left thinking "But I was just getting started!" Funny as it is, I think I may actually prefer the fight with him at the very start of the game to the "real" battle with him; making him drop the Metroid hatching and watching as he scrambles to pick it up again before running away is always funny.

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Thursday, September 9, 2004

You must learn control!

	I'm playing through Super Metroid again, because I've been craving a good action/platformer game to go along with Skies of Arcadia Legends. I love turn based RPGs -- I really do. But if that's all I play for a long period of time, I tend to start wanting to play a more action themed game instead, as is the case now. I'll probably end up splitting my time between the two games until I beat Super Metroid, which shouldn't be long. I know the game inside out, and I'm already about half way through it. One thing that I've been struggling with, though, is the control scheme in Super Metroid. After playing the two GBA Metroid games, it just seems awkward in some ways. You'd think it would be the opposite, since the GBA has two less buttons than a SNES controller and you can customize your control scheme in Super Metroid, but it's not, and there's one central reason for it. That is, a seperate button is required for dashing in Super Metroid. I've never liked this, even before the GBA Metroids were released, simply because it's awkward to be holding in the dash button while jumping with another button and firing with yet another. Having you automatically dash just by holding in a direction on the control cross in the GBA games is something I really liked, but alas, that's not an option in Super Metroid. And because of it, you pretty much just have to use three of the controller's four face buttons for fire, jump, and dash. Now, having to use three of the face buttons instead of only two -- for fire and jump -- is bad because in Super Metroid, you've got five different selectable items rather than the one or two in the GBA games. So you have an item select button to scroll through these, and an item cancel button to unselect everything. Having the item cancel button was a smart move, since when you're in the middle of a boss fight and you tap the item select button twice to fire off a super missile or two, you're not going to want to have to push the item select button three more times to get back to your normal beam and also be ready to fire more missiles on short notice. So you push the item cancel button and your selection is immediately canceled, bringing you back to your normal beam and also allowing you to fire missiles with only one or two more taps of the item select button. Sounds like a convenient way of switching between items, doesn't it? But that's where the dash button comes in and mucks everything up. Since you're having to use three out of four face buttons on fire, jump, and dash, three very commonly used functions, that only leaves one more face button for either item select or item cancel. So which do you assign to it? Well, either way, it results in a less than optimum control scheme, since whichever you don't put on the remaining face button has to be assigned to the Select button. And pushing the Select button quickly means taking your thumb off the control cross, which is never a good thing when you're trying to fight something. Why not assign item select to the L or R button and item cancel to the remaining face button, you ask? Having item select on the R button certainly would be similar to the GBA games' control schemes, where you hold in the R button to select missiles/super missiles/power bombs. Well, that was exactly my line of thought, so I tried it when I first started my new game on Super Metroid. But even though it's more convenient for switching items, it leaves you at a huge disadvantage, and it was causing me to take way more damage than I should have been. The reason being, I no longer had the ability to easily aim diagonally downward. I chose to put angle up on the L button, like it is in the GBA games, but then you have no angle down. Turns out, in Super Metroid, angle up/down can only be assigned to the L and R buttons; nothing else. (Though having angle down assigned to Select wouldn't really be much better.) And I never really realized it before, but I use angle down a lot in Super Metroid. In the GBA games, while the L button is angle up, you can hold that down and then push down on the control cross to angle down. Despite taking some getting used to, that's actually a pretty good way of having both angle up and down assigned to the same button. ... But again, it's not an option in Super Metroid; angle up and angle down must be assigned to different shoulder buttons or not be assigned at all. So there I am in Norfair, jumping over pits of lava. ... But wait, there's enemies in the lava and -- crap, I have no way of shooting them, short of jumping over them and firing downwards as I pass by overhead. Okay, I'll try -- crap, it hit me as I was jumping over it, and now I've fallen in the lava. And it's beating on me while I try and jump out of the pit, knocking me back into the lava a couple times. There goes an energy tank, but at least I'm out of the -- crap, there are four more pits like that in the room. See what I mean? Angle up and angle down are both equally important in Super Metroid, so losing the ability to use one of them really, really sucks. Admittedly, you can push a diagonal on the control cross to aim in that direction, but that can interfere with your jumping and is just generally a pain in the butt. If you know something's coming, it can be substituted for the use of a button for diagonal aiming without too much of a problem, but it's hard to use on the spot. From all this, I've come to the conclusion that, to really make Super Metroid's controls work the best they could, you'd need a PS1/PS2 controller with its four shoulder buttons. That way you could have angle up and angle down on L1/R1, and have item cancel and item select on L2/R2. All of them would be easily accessible for quick use, while leaving the face buttons for fire, jump, and dash. ... And maybe the fourth face button could be used for moonwalking. (Anyone remember that? I never have it turned on because I always end up accidentally doing it instead of turning around and firing at something behind me.) Also, I'm curious. ... How do other people set up the control scheme in Super Metroid? The way I have mine now, and the way I've found I like it best, is to have fire on Y, jump on B, dash on A, item select on X, item cancel on Select, angle up on L, and angle down on R.

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Wednesday, September 8, 2004

Possessed Guestbook?

	Okay, this is something odd I've noticed in the past couple weeks: The number of signatures in my guestbook keeps fluctuating between 113 and 114. Each time it reaches 114, I look and there's a new entry, but I never notice any entries being deleted when the number drops back down to 113. From this, I've come up with a few different hypotheses about what's happening, but I don't really care enough to do anything with them beyond writing this post; speculation is more fun than actual research. Ah, the joy of being a slacker. The first hypothesis is that, for some reason, people are deleting their entries in my guestbook that are from farther back. This would explain why I wouldn't notice missing entries, since I usually only look over the first page of signatures when the number drops to 113. But at the same time, I'm getting new entries every so often, so the number would climb back up to 114. A variation would be that there's a bug and entries are being deleted automatically by the site. I doubt this, however, as there are many other guestbooks with more entries than mine. And if other people were experiencing the same thing, I imagine it would've been fixed. Hypothesis number two is that someone has my password and is just trying to screw with my mind. Messing with my guestbook would probably be the best way to do so, seeing as I don't have any easy way of tracking it, and it's not something I would really notice all that much. If this is the case, however, the plan's backfired, seeing as I really don't care about my guestbook. So ha. And last of all, just because I'm crazy and paranoid like that, the thought occured to me that maybe my guestbook has been possessed. By what or how, who knows, but its goal seems to be to keep me from reaching 115 entries, if that is, by some fluke, what's going on. Maybe it's the spirit of someone who got their myOtaku account deleted for spamming guestbooks, and now they haunt the site's guestbooks, trying to get their revenge in some twisted way. ... So, who's up for a witch hunt?

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Monday, September 6, 2004

Killed 'em Dead ... Except for One

	I finally got to see Kill Bill vol. 1 last night. One of my brothers, who came up from the bay area for labor day weekend, has "acquired" a copy, which we watched while waiting for some more "acquisitions" to finish burning, since two of us hadn't seen it before. I can see why my mom didn't want me to see it, what with all the outrageous squirting of blood, but I really don't care about that. Movie/video game blood doesn't bother me. Call me desensitized or whatever, but I have a firm distinction in my mind between fake and real gore. When I was younger, I actually used to get a bit sick when I saw real blood, but blood in movies and games has never bothered me because I knew it was all fake. So where the heck am I going with that last paragraph? Well, the point I'm making is that gory movies/games don't desensitize kids to violence, it desensitizes them to fake violence. Or at least it should, unless the kids are stupid and can't distinguish between reality and fantasy. In which case I think it's more important for parents to teach them the difference, rather than simply shielding them from violent movies and whatnot. Because shielding them doesn't actually deal with the problem, it simply prolongs it until they either just learn some sense on their own or until they're no longer under their parents' control. And yeah. No idea why I went off on that tangent, really. Just came to mind. So ... ... back to Kill Bill vol. 1. I really enjoyed it, which from me, is saying something; I rarely enjoy movies that much anymore. So now I know what all the hype was about, and now I'm wanting to see vol. 2, heh. As I'd heard (way too many times) from James, all the characters are very interesting -- the kind that you really want to learn more about. Which, of course, means seeing vol. 2. ... I just have to find a way to get my hands on it, since I doubt my parents would let me rent the second one when they wouldn't let me rent the first. Being a under 18 -- and hence, not being able to have my own account at the movie rental places -- really sucks. Oh, yeah, and I forgot to mention: Today's my three year OtakuBoards anniversary, if anyone cares. Also, February 13, 2005 will mark three years of me being a staff member. Go me.

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Sunday, September 5, 2004

Now Playing #56

	Anime: Ranma ½ Track: Little Date Time: 4:09 Size: 31.4 KB Little Date is the opening theme for the second season of Ranma ½, and out of the four opening themes I've heard so far (for the first four seasons), it's my favorite. I'm still not quite sure why the song is titled "Little Date," but hey, I can't think of anything more appropriate, so whatever. And seeing as I can only understand the lyrics through subtitles, they take a back seat to the tune and rhythm of the song in my liking of the track anyway. Oh, and if you want a translation of the lyrics, you'll have to get one yourself. Finding a good translation of the full song's lyrics (as opposed to the shortened TV version) was more of a bother than I cared to go through, so you're on your own this time.

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Friday, September 3, 2004

The myOtaku Blues

	You ever just lose nearly all interest in online stuff? It's strange, but sometimes that happens to me, especially with myOtaku here. Sometimes I'll feel like writing posts often, and sometimes I just have no desire whatsoever to write anything at all for my page. And right now I'm sort of in one of those slumps, as shown by a week of almost no posts. Part of it, I think, is because I have other things occupying more of my time lately that I don't really have much to say about. I already made two posts talking about Skies of Arcadia Legends, so I've pretty much exhausted that subject for now. And I've never had much more than a few short comments on the anime I watch (another reason why I barely ever visit the anime forum on OB), so I don't really have much to say about Ranma ½. Well ... I suppose I do have one thing to say about Ranma ½. You can use the code ½ to make the little ½ character on a web page. In case anyone cares. Though on the other hand, I've had more interest in OtakuBoards lately, which is nice. Sometimes the same thing will happen with OB as is happening right now with myOtaku, where I just don't care to write posts. I'll sign on, take care of moderating stuff, and then sign off without posting much of anything, and do that for days at a time. Those are the times when moderating seems like more of a bother than anything else, but then when my interest picks up again like right now, it reminds me why I keep doing it even when I don't really want to sometimes. When I do take an interest in something, I really get into it and it becomes enjoyable, as is the case with posting/moderating on OtakuBoards. Oh, and if this post seems like a contradiction of my lack of interest in writing myOtaku posts as of late, it's not, really. I mainly just threw together this pile of random thoughts so there'd be something in between the the midi posts. And, of course, to give Shinmaru something to feast on. I know how he loves my myOtaku posts. Edit: If you are in any way a fan of Mario games, you must watch this video. It's insane.

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Sunday, August 29, 2004

Now Playing #55

	Game: Skies of Arcadia Track: Bombardment Time: 2:42 Size: 104 KB This is the biggest midi I've yet to put up, but it's also one of the closest sounding to the original song, so I think it's worth it. I don't think it'll take any longer than about 30 seconds to load on a 56K modem though, and you can listen to it as it loads, so I figure it doesn't matter that much. And it's still nowhere near the scale of an mp3. Anyway, about the song itself, you should know that I've been playing Skies of Arcadia Legends a lot lately, seeing as the previous two posts are all about the game. And during the time spent with it, I've developed quite a liking for the game's music, the Bombardment track (the airship battle theme) being one of my favorites. And lo and behold, there was this awesome midi version of the song on vgmusic.com -- how could I not put it up for this week's now playing? What I really love about this song, though, is that it perfectly sets the mood for airship battles. It just ... it's hard to explain, but it just feels right to have this music playing as you watch your ship maneuvering around and trading fire with enemy vessels, as well as for when you're setting up the next round's actions. It's fast paced, it's got a sense of tension and desperation, but it also has an air of serious determination about it. For me, it really helps make the airship battles come alive.

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Thursday, August 26, 2004

Vyse the Pincushion

	I've been playing quite a bit of Skies of Arcadia Legends lately (14:00 so far). Right now I'm in Ixa'taka, and the game's been pretty good, but something happened to me while crossing the South Ocean that really pissed me off. Most of what I was fighting for random battles in the South Ocean were these enemies called Gravers. Their normal attacks weren't that strong, even though they had good defense and a decent amount of HP. A Cutlass Fury S.Move from Vyse could take one out, and the other three party members could take one out together with their normal attacks. But it was the magic they used which lowered my respect for the game somewhat: Eternum, a spell which jams a buttload of spikes through a character's body to instantly KO them, and never ever seems to miss. Now, I could see a boss being able to cast Eternum occasionally -- that's something I'm prepared to deal with. But normal enemies? Especially when you sometimes encounter those enemies in packs of six? No, that's going too far. That's going to the point where you either have to run from battles with that many of them or you die. I know, because I didn't run, and I died. Basically, the fight was with six Gravers and two other piddly little magic user enemies that didn't really affect the outcome of the fight at all. I'm not stupid; I concentrate my attacks on the things with the instant death spells first. So I start off with a Cutlass Fury S.Move from Vyse, and kill one of the six Gravers. Then all five remaining Gravers get to attack before my next character. First one casts Eternum; I'm down to three party members. Second one casts Eternum; down to half my party. Third one casts Eternum; at this point, I'm just hoping I can run away with my last character. Fourth one ... attacks! Yes, maybe I can still get away! ... But no, the fifth one casts Eternum and I get Game Over. So is it just me, or does anyone else see something blatantly wrong with that fight? I mean, I only got a single attack off before I was forced to watch as each one of my party members was taken out by an instant KO spell. And all this in a random battle on the overworld. In my opinion, things like that just should not be able to happen in RPGs, considering there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it. Normal, overworld enemies should not have instant KO spells that never miss -- there shouldn't be instant KO spells that never miss. Especially when the only revive spell you've got at that point only works half the time. On average, it takes two castings of the spell to revive someone, which means two rounds spent to revive one character, during which time the enemies have the opportunity to take out two more characters. I mean, damn. ... I was liking the difficulty of the game -- it's harder than most RPGs I've played -- but when enemies can do that to you, I tend to start using phrases like "severely overpowered" to describe them. If I didn't scour every area for discoveries (thereby leveling up with an excuse, heh), I can't even imagine how bad I'd get my low level ass kicked. I barely scraped by against the last boss I fought, that Rockwyrm thing, since it had a tendancy to instantly KO Fina again every time I revived her, before I had a chance to heal her up to full HP.

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Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Skies of Final Tactics Legends ... or something.

	Yesterday was the first day of classes out at the community college where I was going to take intermediate algebra. I say "going to" because all the classes at decent times were filled up by the time I got to register (concurrent enrolement students are the lowest of the low on the priority list), and when I went out there yesterday to see if I could add one of the classes, there were about fifteen other people also trying to add them. So I'm just kind of screwed for this semester. But I also went and picked up Skies of Arcadia Legends, Final Fantasy Tactics, and a PS1 memory card yesterday. For some reason, the memory card doesn't seem to like being used with my PS2 multitap, but whatever; seems to work fine when plugged directly into the PS2, so I don't really care. And the used copy of FFT I got was in excellent condition, which I'm really happy about. There were some smudges (okay, a lot of smudges) on the disc, but everything came off when I cleaned it with a damp cloth and the game worked fine when I started it up. So I'm really happy about that. So far I haven't really played FFT yet (just started it up to make sure it worked), because I decided to play through Skies of Arcadia Legends after asking Shin(bo) which he thought I should play first. I've been playing for about five hours so far, and the game seems like it's just starting to really get going. I can't wait to see what comes next. Right now I'm in the catacombs beneath Lower City in Valua, just after having beaten that stupid blob boss thing. (Yay for running back to save points that were just before the boss, but I need items like tents for it to really be effective.) And now I need to buy more Curia Crystals -- I swear, every time I'd get everyone unpoisoned and then attack for a round, it would do that "Poisonous Bile" attack or whatever it was called where it floods the room by throwing up, which would usually poison one or two characters. I finally managed to take the bugger down with a number of Cutlass Fury S.Moves from Vyse and normal attacks and one Tackle S.Move from Drachma, though. Aika mainly just sat back and healed, built up SP, and cast the occasional attack spell. One thing that annoys me about the battle system, though, is that you don't always input commands in the order that they happen. You enter commands for an entire round all at once, but even though you enter them in the order of Vyse-Aika-Drachma because that's the order your party is in, Aika is quicker so she usually attacks first. This has kind of been throwing me off for planning which characters are going to take out which enemies, where I'm trying to be the most efficient and not waste damage by killing something with Vyse and Drachma that could just as easily be killed by Vyse and a weaker hit from Aika, for example. It's nothing big, but I like micromanaging my characters in RPGs so as to come out of each battle having done the best that I could do. ... As shown by the fact that I'd come out of almost every battle in Chrono Cross with full HP because I'd make sure to have enough element levels left over at the end of the fight to heal everyone back up to full. Heh, I'm kind of anal about things like that, I guess. I've been getting used to the way it's set up in Skies of Arcadia Legends, though, so hopefully it won't be too much longer till I can accurately judge what's going to happen when. And I really wish I had a tape recorder, so I could've recorded and typed up some of the comments my brother made while watching me play. Apparently he's not too fond of the "floating islands in the sky" thing, and he made some pretty funny remarks about it. "It seems like in a world like this, everything would revolve around throwing things off [the islands] or not throwing them off." Unfortunately, that's about the only one I can remember accurately at the moment. And I'd say, "But you get the idea," except that you really can't from just that one. They were hilarious in a crazy sort of way, and that one really just went along as part of a long rant about the Lower City's garbage problem.

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