Wednesday, July 14, 2004

   Seven Samurai ... and big mechs

Well to start off i watched Seven Samurai this morning. Its 204 minutes long (uh ... 3hr 24min). It was made in the 50's by Akira Kurosawa along with a bunch of other good movies. But Seven Samurai is what he is mostly known for. Akira Kurosawa was a big influence on George Lucas which is evident in his Star Wars series. First off R2D2 and C3PO were takin from two characters in The Hidden Fortress. They were these two idiots that by chance stumbled into the whole plot much like how the droids happen to meet up with the princess and Luke. Also the reason the way of the Jedi is very closely related to the way of the samurai is because of George Lucas's interest in Kurosawa's films. Theres probably a lot more influences but ive only watched two of Akira Kurosawa's films. Well anyway I picked it from my bros DVD collection cuz im watching Samurai 7 which is a new anime thats loosely based off seven samurai. I say loosely cuz the anime deals with samurais vs big mech things and has a lot of plot differences from the movie. Only the basic story layout remains the same. Not to say that the changes are bad in any way cuz I really like the anime from the 4 eps. i've seen.

Akira Kurosawa's Classic

I also continued to play Tales of Symponia with my little brother. The two player mode is cool since i cant count on the cpu for the other party members. Its retarded and it'll do things like heal a person who has full life while leaving the other party members to die. And I love the real time battle system cuz u are directly involved in the combat. The fighting system is basically a trademark of the Tales series though no one really knows a lot about the Tales series since most only came out in Japan. Anyway the battle system is very unique and combines a normal turn based RPG's engine with a fighting game engine. So u have combo attacks and are able to pause the action to select a different character, magic attack, item to use, and other stuff. So playin with a buddy really unlocks its potential. I have the original Tales of Phantasia rom for the snes. It was only released in Japan, i think, so the one i have was translated by some dude. The fighting system was very similar to Symphonia and its a shame to that it didnt come to the US. I never finished playin it cuz its an old game and i felt like playin some newer games though the story and gameplay were both good. Well if u want to play it, finding a copy and a the ZSNES emulator online (Zsnes is the best one out) shouldnt be hard. I also played Tales of Destiny 2 (on the playstation) for a few minutes. The battle system was basically the same as the snes one though i didnt get to see if there were any differences. So in closing if u have a Gamecube u must buy Tales of Symphonia since its one of the few games that are worth buying.

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