Niahak's Place

I said I might be getting a video capture device soon, and it happened. Who would’ve thought?

So the last half of last week, I took a plane trip home, ran around a bunch of places, had about 30 minutes of free time, slept some, and came back Sunday night.

I’m still feeling pretty exhausted.  Since I didn’t play any games (well, ~20 minutes of Smash Bros), here are a few observations.

• People in groups can be inconsiderate normally, but if you put them in an airport they will surprise you with their blatant disregard for both other people and for their own brain.
• Pianos are pretty damn cool.  Few other instruments can create such a variety of good music solo.
• Getting a “real” job really helps your confidence when talking to people.
• It feels good to compliment someone who deserves it in a public forum.
• Never realized how rare it is to meet someone who’s made it through high school and still has an interest in math and science.  I mean, it’s nice enough to “be” a rare commodity, but… if we keep this pace up, the economy’s going to hell in a handbasket.

I was actually hoping to start the campaign of Kohan, since I really enjoy doing that every so often, but no use complaining about that.  Now I can play Persona 3, there’s not much reason to go for that.   Plus, Wild Arms 5 comes out tomorrow, and I still have this really nifty new computer I can play games on.  Now, if I can only find the time…

So at some point I decided it was a good idea to go to GenCon Indy.  Having little warning (I only found out it was coming two weeks before), I had to get a badge the old-fashioned way.  The night before it started (but alas, too late to register), I found out there was a Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament.  Seeing as I did decently well in the tournaments at Rose, I wanted to sign up but it was halfway full already.

So I did what any self-respecting Smash fan would; I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and drove down to GenCon on Thursday.   I waited in line for about 2 hours total to get my badge and register for the tournament.   I arrived at work 45 minutes late, when I had hoped to be a bit early.  When I got home from work, the final pieces of my new desktop had arrived.  I spent about 2 hours putting everything together, and then spent about 3 trying to figure out why it wasn’t booting up.  I gave up at 11 and went to bed.

This morning, I woke up, went to work for half a day, then went to GenCon.   Though I had huge troubles parking (every single lot I found was full, except I finally found a shady valet parking place), I made it to GenCon with about half an hour to spare before the Smash tournament qualifiers.

The qualifying round was a joke, honestly.  4 player free-for-all, random *all* stages, no items (thank god),  only the victor proceeds.  Nearly everyone there wasn’t a serious player; there were 3 who were serious enough to “know” wavedashing, and one that used it to great effect.  None were in my round.

So, for the qualifying round, I played Peach.  I’m most used to her playstyle, she’s easy to play cautious, and I hadn’t played in more than 2 weeks (not seriously in probably 3 months).   I won with 2 lives to spare (in a 3-stock game).

Honestly, I was the best person at dodge-work there.  In a 2v2 played for fun afterwards , I finished the first 3 rounds without dying.  It helped that I had the best player there as my teammate, but I attribute my dodging skills to the wonder-works of my roommates.  One played Sheik and was deadly accurate; the other played Jigglypuff, and if you didn’t dodge you were dead.  My strategy was and still is mostly defensive.  Harass with turnips, block attacks, throw if possible, pursue opponent if necessary.  Tomorrow’s tournament is 1-on-1, and I’ll be happy if I make 3rd place.  One of the guys there is really good, and I think another would beat me in a 1-on-1 if I’m not lucky.

GenCon itself is somewhat lackluster to me; I have little more than a passing interest in RPGs, though I played a couple in middle school.  Magic, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh have no appeal to me anymore (though a friend is currently in the Magic Legacy pre-Championship)… the only major thing there that appeals to me is the electronic gaming, and the Smash tourney was 40 people – we had ones twice that size at Rose, and they were better organized.  There’s a Starcraft 2 section there, with playable demos – may get in on that later – but beyond that, a few companies are showing off MMOGs… that’s about it, really.

There is a really cool manga shop booth there; it’s all Japanese.  I wasn’t able to find either Three Kingdoms or “Wolf Dragon Legend” (Kouryuuden), which were the two manga I’d enjoyed the most, but they did have the Wild Arms ACF Artbook (quite nice, but I already have it) and the Valkyrie Profile artbook (may consider it), as well as the “Legend of Langrisser” artbook (nice, but no thanks – I know Urushihara’s other job).  They did have the Tales of Symphonia manga… but sadly, everything’s new – which means high prices.  I really loved the manga stores in Japan – I got great manga for $3, and most for $1 or less (I think I got a Lunar 2 one for 50 cents).  Here, it’s more like $6 or $7 for one volume.  I may look into that place more tomorrow after the tournament.

After GenCon today, I stopped by the nicer GameStop.  That is to say, the one that was an EBGames until two weeks ago.  Believe it or not, they had Persona 3, so I’ve played an hour of it so far.  I love the atmosphere; that’s one thing the Persona games pull off really, really well.  The artbook is good, but not really great; its main appeal stems from the fact that it’s both free and hardbound.  Haven’t listened to the soundtrack included yet, but I’m guessing it’s the better part of the bonus package.

After GameStop, I went home and gave the desktop another try.  After a small but vital piece of advice from a friend, I got it up and running.  And thus it stands; the best day in weeks after one of the worst.  Life has its downs, but maybe without them we wouldn’t recognize the ups.

このポストで、辞書を使わないで、日本語だけで　書くつもりです。

だから、これはみじかいでしょ。　私は漢字を覚えないんですし、まだ日本語が下手なんです。

でも、　まだ書いてみてたいんだ。　どうしてですか？　自分も分からない。

コンピュター科学がせんこうだったけど、まだほかのもの（語とか）が知りたいです。時々、練習をするために日本語だけで考えるけど、

このような考えを書くことは三年間でぜんぜんしなかったんです。

まだ下手なんですね。。。

I’ve still got some of it, but it’s like running molasses through a colander.  I need to practice far more often.  I could’ve done most of this better three years ago 🙁

I beat Steambot Chronicles yesterday. That game was impressive enough in some ways for me to write a review immediately.

To summarize: Despite being in almost all other ways a mediocre game, the amount of choice present makes it really fun to play up to a certain point. If you like Harvest Moon, you will like Steambot. It’s nearly everything Harvest Moon should have become five years ago. Dozens of ways to make money (though only a few are viable).

I went out and got a new TV yesterday. It’s a 26-inch flatscreen. I’m upgrading from a 19-inch CRT with only the coax input working to a 720px widescreen with composite input. So far I’m much more impressed by Odin Sphere, but I’ve only played that and Steambot on it so far. I’m looking forward to playing something like Wild ARMs on it, weird as it sounds. The biggest difference I’ve noticed is that the text is incredibly sharp, and colors are much better defined. Any sprite-based game should look much better. Now I just need a composite input for my SNES…

In terms of other games, I’m still playing Genso Sangokushi 2 (Fantasy Sango 2). Observe.

Yuan Shu: To think you all made it this far! Guards! Deal with these nuisances right away!

If you noticed Lady Wu’s thread, he ends up getting burned for being a bit too close to his advisor. In any case, the game is certainly continuing and I’m still enjoying it. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but I didn’t even notice some of the core features of GS2 until a dozen or so hours into the game. I would love to see it translated (I could possibly do it but I don’t have the hacking know-how and I’d need to shore up a LOT on my kanji), because some of the bits are really nice – the item creation in particular is useful and well-done, if not as deliciously random as in Star Ocean: The Second Story. You upgrade skills by allocating points to them (the higher the skill, the more to level up) and the game has great strategic depth as there are 4 paths you can take for each of the 7 (!) sub-characters Miel (as Lady Wu eloquently named her) can become. Not to mention the fact that some skills are really formations that affect your stats… My only complaint is I don’t have a good heal-all ability, just a couple positive status effects (Armor up is really useful) and Miel’s weak heal-one-person skill. I went down the wrong branch for the lettuce kid (whatever you call him), so I just now got the heal-all skill for him and I bet it’s weak.

Since I just recently figured out how to take screenshots easily, I will likely post many more, as GS2 is a beautiful game.

Also, I’m working on a translation of the NES adventure game Akira, based on the anime movie of the same name. In the past week, I had the chance to read the manga and see the movie. The manga is so much better that I can’t imagine anyone liking the movie – the manga just has so much more depth, while in the movie, everything is horribly compressed and much of the original vision is sadly lost. I really hope no one ever tries to condense Three Kingdoms into anything less than 20 hours.

And, sadly, my work-lots time is not what ends now. I will try to keep updating the site once every few days, but no guarantees.