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Tim Rogers and Goku Makai Mura

WARNING: occasionally-foul language approaches! NO REFUGE

You know, the delay between the button press and the throwing of the lance is pretty damned evil. I asked the booth dude if it was intentional, and he gave me the canned “we’re very very very very sorry — it’ll be fixed” response. So I take it they really, seriously don’t intend for it to be like that. And he was damned apologetic.

So! Yeah! It’s most definitely a problem. And I found it quite frankly unplayable like that.

Yeah. Well. You should have picked up a better weapon. The lance kind of sucks anyway. Always has. I just took it that they made it suck even more, to drive the point home. All the other weapons work just fine. I think the first weapon I picked up was the scythe, and that was great.

I think I died twice in the demo, and both were because I just did something fucking stupid, like jump into a bottomless pit of my own volition then wonder why I just did that.

i picked up the fucking crossbow, and it was alright. it still didn’t feel “right.”

Yeah, that wasn’t the best weapon to exchange it for. The crossbow wasn’t “right” in Chou Makai Mura either. I always avoided it. Better than the torch, though. And yeah, minimally better than the lance.

the capcom dude there said that the producer — i guess that’s fujiwara — is, for the record, “still kind of tooling with the idea of making it feel like the old ones, or making it feel fresh and optimized.” or something to that effect. in that, you see. well, you know. it’s like comparing rondo of blood to symphony of the night, control-wise. when i go to meet igarashi and crew next thursday (!! — any questions you want to ask, put them here) i plan to ask him some things about this; i know that a lot of japanese castlevania fans dropped out of fandom for the series when symphony of the night hit, because they felt its smoother controls were “selling out.”

you know what i mean?

I do. For the most part, the classic controls can go fuck themselves. This still basically feels like the old games, while not making me want to kill something.

that you say the demo for goku makaimura was not difficult says that you have played a lot of makaimura, or at least more than a person who has played none.

Well! That doesn’t mean I’ve ever been any GOOD at the series, saving Yuji Naka’s version of the second one — which was really fucking playable. The third game in particular, now, is a game that’s made unreasonably hard just to be unreasonably hard. I’ve only twice ever even made it past the first level. And it’s done so just arbitrarily, in part by taking out things that should be there and forcing reliance on new things that have no reason to be there. The first game I can forgive better because, you know, it was the first game and it was made in 1985. I still don’t think I’ve made it further than the third or fourth level without cheating, and then only maybe once ever.

This is… better. It’s more like a sequel to Dai, where Chou was more like a sequel to the original. And I don’t just mean the vertical shooting, which sure as hell helps. I just mean more thought was put into how the game’s put together, and it’s made to for going forward rather than hitting your head against a wall over and over. That you are revived instantly when you die is a big difference. You’re not penalized up the asshole for a single mistake. You just lose your life and make note to next time not do again what you did.

now! i’m not saying that the game should be zelda-dumb, i’m just saying that . . . hell, i don’t know. lord knows what i’m arguing here. it doesn’t fucking matter. just that, well, the truth is, i don’t like the game. you can’t argue with me on that one — you can’t tell me that i do indeed like it!!

i really liked it on genesis, i just think that on PSP it doesn’t feel . . . right. or it doesn’t feel grown up. that and i don’t like the jumping. i don’t like over-shooting every jump. it makes me feel dumb. though i guess that’s something i could learn.

fuck, maybe i should just quit playing videogames, i don’t know.

I didn’t have any problem with the jumping. So!

Should the game feel grown-up? I mean. What can you really do with a side-scrolling Makai Mura? It is informed by just about everything the earlier games did “wrong”, and it does a good job of patching them up without essentially changing how the game feels. It’s not a total reinvention like, you know, Gradius V or something. I don’t know that it needs to be, though. Makai Mura doesn’t have this long history of clutter like Gradius, that needed to be focused away. It just needed the hate removed, and that’s happened. And beyond that, the atmosphere has been made more like what the earlier games clearly wanted it to be.

If it were polished too much or made too easy it’d lose the scariness that the atmosphere’s there to amplify. As it is, it’s basically balanced to keep the player constantly on-edge without overwhelming him or punishing him inordinately. Which is a balance the earlier games never quite found.

Is it just that the game’s a 2D platformer rendered in 3D that puts you off? A meticulous revisitation of a game last seen in 1991, with only the things fixed and added that might ideally have been fixed and added in 1996 on, say, the Saturn? Are you wondering why Capcom even bothered if that’s all they were going to do? Especially with a platform like the PSP, which should be able to do… more, somehow?

Because that’s the thing that I like the best about it. That it subverts what the PSP can hypothetically do, and simply treats it like what it is: a fucking handheld system. A handheld system with pretty 3D graphics; still just a souped-up Game Boy, with a small screen and basically 2D controls. The fanciest, most expensive, most over-the-top Game Boy on Earth, maybe. Still just a Game Boy, still just as prone to dropping on the pavement, still an intimate system for use by a single person at a time only, ever, that has no need to impress or entertain anyone else and needs to entertain that single person in a way that he can wrench himself free at any moment, to jump off the train when his stop arrives.

It doesn’t bother with the bullshit. It’s just another Makai Mura — educated by fourteen years, perhaps — made for the only platform it could reasonably be made for, made in the only way it could reasonably be made. And suddenly it’s made clear: who the fuck wants a PS2 in his pocket? Let’s make the best of an unfortunate situation.

(September 23rd, 2005 @ 5:45am)



21 responses

I AM RETURNED

As I approached the people-movers, customs certificate in my teeth, I was addressed with my first words upon re-entering the country. An old man stood to the side, idly checking for passports. “That any good?” he asked. “It’s delicious,” I replied. “Got to get me one of those,” he said as he returned my passport.

Minutes later, I boarded the BART. It was more spacious than the Tokyo trains, and I was actually allowed to sit down. Anywhere I wanted, really. No one to shove his elbow in my ribs or push me so I crack my temple on the doorframe. A male voice came over the intercom: “Stay clear of the doors? Stay clear of the doors. The doors’re gonna close.” Then, as an afterthought: “They will reopen.”

I knew I was home again.

Visiting Japan is like visiting the biggest high school on Earth. I don’t understand all of the Japan blogs and stories of how weird Japan is. Actually, it’s all too familiar. And I think I’m past that point in my life.

(September 20th, 2005 @ 12:41pm)



24 responses

Actually, it’s more like “POO-QUIH?”

aderack: Tell me: what’s the best part of stomping on a Goomba? In SMB1, anyway.
Smiley: Hm. Either the bounce off the goomba (either the full-fledged super bounce, or the little bounce you always get), or possibly the sound effect. The sound effect is important, but I’d place more weight on what it feels like to bounce off the goomba.

I suppose the moment of squashed-goomba sprite helps, too. But Gyromite veterans probably are going to be less fond of that aspect.
aderack: That also is nice. I’d put more weight on the sound effect, mostly because of its descriptive power.
Smiley: Mm. I guess it’s critical, but when it’s done right you don’t really notice it. Because… it’s THE sound effect, you know?
aderack: I just played some All-Stars SMB1. The sound effect is just a generic “CLOP”.
Smiley: Nrr.
aderack: I… turned it off. This encapsulates what the SNES represents to me. Just to mention!

…


Toups: I think the bounce is. It’s small and difficult to control, and it’s kind of thrilling for a moment. It’s the thrill of the hunt, as it were.
aderack: Without the sound effect, though, the bounce has no context! You don’t have the decription. You don’t know why he bounces!
Toups: You know, I can’t even think of what the sound effect is.
aderack: It’s… squishy. It sounds like you just jumped on something and flattened it. In a bouncy way. Very illustrative. The sound goes “poo-QUA?” I’d go to say it’s maybe the one thing that I get the most joy out of in Super Mario Bros.
Toups: I’ll take your word for it for now. But I’ll be listening the next time I play. The next time YOU play, take note of the physics of the bounce. Compared to… really any Mario game after it.
aderack: Well. Yes. There’s also the issue that I need sound to play videogames. Or else the… feeling is gone. I feel disoriented.

* * *

aderack: Will Capcom save the PSP??
Thom: can remakes really ‘save’ something?
aderack: Well. They’re still more interesting than most else on the platform. And it’s interesting to note them alongside a brand-new Makai Mura game. Simiar idea — revisiting old 2D series with a 3D-rendered version. Seems to be part of the same plot Capcom has going. And it’s not a bad approach to PSP software.

I mean. Not so much the revisiting old territory. It’s just — handhelds, frankly, work best with 2D games. So a 3D-modeled 2D game is what the PSP is best suited for. And when you combine that with some appealing franchises, here and there, you’re on the way to making something kind of attractive that actually suits the hardware at hand.
Thom: true. not really in the vein of what Sony was shooting for, though
aderack: No, not at all. Sony doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing, though.
Thom: also true

* * *

aderack: Someone from The Escapist misses the point behind Super Mario Bros. 2 US, which I just played the other day and realized is probably my favorite main-series Mario game.

It’s not that Nintendo intended to release Doki Doki Panic and didn’t think it would sell without Mario; it’s that Miyamoto didn’t like Super Mario Bros. 2 very much and didn’t think IT would sell, so he found a better game to retrofit in its place.

And frankly, who cares about Doki Doki Panic? He’s talking like the game got raped by marketing. It was a licenced game. Based on a Japanese TV show.
ajutla: SMB2 was the second Mario game I played. After Mario 64. This kind of…fucked with my perception of the series, maybe. Or maybe it made it clearer.

aderack: It’s the only… interesting game, in a way. The only odd one, anyway.

Curiously, Yoshi’s Island, which does try to fight most of the inanity in Mario World, looks back to SMB2 a lot.

I mean, SMB1 and 3 are more influential and important, certainly. The second game has more… art to it, though, in its way. It’s more expressive and accidental. It’s like Kuribo’s shoe, except it’s a whole game.
ajutla: Yeah, SMB2 is interesting as…kind of a different direction that was abandoned for a while. Like Zelda II. Castlevania II.
aderack: Life Force.
ajutla: Hey. And the ideas explored in all of these games were sort of returned to, later in the series, once the well had run dry.
aderack: My earlier reaction to Yoshi’s Island, before I went back and played it again, was a residual effect from my earliest experiences with it — like that memory we all have of how terrible Adventure of Link is. When, actually, I… think the second game’s my favorite, in retrospect.

Though it’s interesting how I accepted Simon’s Quest and Life Force at the same time as I rejected the others. Maybe because those were the only ones I personally owned copies of.
ajutla: You should play Link’s Awakening.
aderack: I should, more. I’ve fiddled with it on an emulator a few times. I was annoyed that it had Mario enemies in it just to be cute, and I liked it that you could jump. That’s… my full impression.
ajutla: It’s really not a scaled-down Link to the Past. It’s a bizarre, throwaway game, which is what makes it so interesting.
aderack: I can get an actual cartridge easily enough, I imagine. Either the original or the DX version.
ajutla: It’s like….it was EAD. And the Game Boy wasn’t EAD’s platform, at all.

Metroid II, say, it’s a pretty serious game. Metroid II is almost meant to show that, yes, the Game Boy is a viable platform. Link’s Awakening is, like, hell, this Game Boy thing is cute, let’s do something weird with it.

Will Wright is in Link’s Awakening. I mean, he’s in it. He lives in a house there. You can go talk to him.
aderack: I wasn’t aware of this.

Yeah, Metroid II seems like it feels free to do whatever the hell it wants because it’s off in the corner somewhere and doesn’t have to please people. So I guess that principle’s the same: the Gameboy is where you’re free. For R&D1, that meant making a serious and introspective game. For EAD, that meant being random and cute.
ajutla: Those are the attitudes I get.

Even Super Mario Land isn’t trying to be cute. It’s just trying to be different. R&D1′s mirror-land take on Mario.
aderack: Trying, in its way, to explore the corners of what Super Mario Bros. hints at yet never deals with. Like having areas that you can only explore if you’re small (or if you’re really patient), and more themed levels, and making your fireballs a more active element in the game design.

I feel like Marioland is SMB deconstructed. It’s like R&D1 saying “how can we make something more interesting out of this?”
ajutla: Mario Land 2 is different. I think it feels like a game they were forced to make or something. Then in Wario Land they assert creative control – change to a character they’re not bored with and do whatever the hell they want.
aderack: Yeah, Mario Land 2 doesn’t have fun with itself. Not much fun, anyway.
ajutla: It’s anemic, almost. As a game. The levels are short but instead of having a point, they have dead air.
aderack: Yeah. It’s almost a parody of Mario World.
ajutla: I might even like the game now, looking at it in that light.

(September 7th, 2005 @ 10:02pm)



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