Otakon 2006

Last weekend I attended the Otakon, the largest anime convention on the East Coast. Living in southern New Jersey, it was a quick two hour drive down to Baltimore, where my friend Ghibli_Geek and I split a hotel room from Thursday to Sunday for some nonstop geeking out on anime and video games. Oh, and cosplayers! Nothing better than a sexy shy guy or a hot looking Roxas to get you questioning your orientation, not to mention giving you confusing feelings towards your video game collection. I mean sure, I like video games, I even say I love them, but it's just never been that kind of love. But now that the possibilities have been put before me, what to do?

Ahem, but I'm not here to discuss that, I'm here to give you a whirlwind tour of the craziness that was the Otakon, with a specific video game focus of course. Everyone ready to see some crazy cosplaying, and a perfect condition Twin Famicom? Good, then let's get started.

I tried to photograph his hudnred- hand slap, but it was too fast to catch on camera.

Hey, not five minutes in the convention center and we've got an E Honda! Cool! I feel it necessary to point out that in most cases when it comes to me taking pics of cosplaying, I go towards outfits that not 7 out of every 10 people have come dressed as. In other words, as much as I love Kingdom Hearts to death, the hundreds of Sora cosplayers didn't stand a chance in my photo album. E Honda, on the other hand, is a character I haven't seen in any of my previous convention outings, so I was quite pleased. With the dealer's room not opening for a few more hours, and nothing terribly interesting playing in any of the video rooms yet, we continued a lookout for more cool video game characters.

Namine and Roxas were just about to get something to eat, so what better time to bother them with a photo? This Roxas is either being cosplayed by a girl, or the prettiest boy I think I've ever seen. At any rate, a pretty exact Roxas costume! Man, I enjoyed the beginning of Kingdom Hearts II with Roxas and Twilight Town. Maybe someday I'll get around to blogging about that, like I've been planning to for the past three weeks. You've inspired me, hot Roxas, I have to make that one of my next blogs! Thank you!

So while Otakon is all about the constant watching of anime and constant spending in the dealer's room, there's also panels going on almost non-stop. I always try to hit a few, because you never know when one might bring up an interesting idea you've never considered, or you might learn some new Photoshop techniques. So Ghibli_Geek and I decided to hit a "History of Gainax" panel. Man, what a train wreck. First off, when talking about an animation studio in a room with large screens and projectors, here's a tip: give us some visual aids man! He spends quite a bit of time talking about how cool their opening animation for Daicon III and IV were, back before they were a company. After getting home, it took me all of ten seconds to find the complete openings on YouTube, and a high quality version available through BitTorrent. Needless to say, when we realized we weren't going to learn too much about the history of the studio here but instead have animation segments described to us when they should be shown, we were out of there.

Objection! Man, I wish I'd thought of that! I think he was the only Phoenix Wright in the whole con, too. Nice choice. When I asked to take his photo, he was like "Oh, wait a second", and then pulled out his convention schedule to mimic the animation of Phoenix tapping a sheet of papers from the game. Hehe! Very cool.

The dealer's room opened at noon, but the line was so insane for it that we decided to hold off until the afternoon. So around three or four we decided that we'd had enough of carrying around money and set off for the dealer's room. Of course, even then, the line was crazy busy. You had to walk up and down rows that were made of red tape on the floor. The sight was quite mesmerizing, so I grabbed a video of the orderly chaos that was the dealer's room line. Click the pic to check it out!

Click the pic for a video!

The Otakon dealer's room is unbelievably big, filled with hundreds of vendors selling that latest and greatest that little fanboys and girls can't wait to blow their money on. Of course, I dove in and started spending recklessly too. One stand though, I went back to over and over during the course of our three day stay. Mad Gear LLC is an import gamer's dream come true. They are the kind of store that I've dreamed of one day being in charge of selling new and used import games at (usually) very good prices. What kind of stuff was to be had? Well how about...

...an in-the-box Famicom system. Go ahead and stare for a bit longer, I'll wait. After all, I certainly did my fair share of staring every time I passed this place. And if you look to the left, you'll see the Japanese import of Rez, complete with Trance Vibrator. Now, the Rez with vibrator was a bit pricey, around $75, but if you could live without that vibrator the game was selling for $28. Did I pick it up? Nope. Kinda wish I did, though. All is not lost, however, as you can always visit his website and get a copy for yourself, as I probably will do myself in the near future. What other wonders did his stand possess? Behold!

The Famicom AV, in box, for $120. Now this one I was *really* close to getting actually. By the time I'd gotten to this stand, I had about $90 left in spending money (among other things I had already bought was a copy of Band Brothers for the DS which set me back $60 at a different stand) and Ghibli_Geek was going to offer the remaining $30 I'd need. But I just didn't feel good about spending all of my money on one single object, no matter how sweet that item may have been. To sweeten the deal, he was also offering one free Famicom game of your choice from the ones he had available. All in all, a very sweet deal. As if my brain wasn't already short-circuiting from the cool stuff to be had here, there was one more system I now have had the honor to see in person:

The Twin Famicom, being sold for $200. For those of you who might not know, the Twin Famicom is a Famicom with the add-on Disk System built in to it. Pretty darn handy. Except of course for the fact that the belts in the Disk Systems do tend to snap in their old age and I'm not sure how difficult it is to install a replacement. At any rate, it was very exciting to see these great pieces of Nintendo history up close, and so near my grasp! One day I shall have a Famicom AV system, but Otakon weekend was just not that time. As I stated before, most of his prices were really fair, but some were unusually high. Specifically, Ouendan, which was being sold elsewhere for $60, was being sold here for $80! What?? That's weird. Didn't stop it from being sold out by the second day, though. On the other hand, a copy of Super Mario RPG for the Super Famicom? $14 freaking dollars! Nice! If you'll recall, it's not easy to find the American counterpart for such a cheap price...

I did however pick up a device that allows me to play import PS2 games and a game from the Simple Series 2000 line, Vol. 50: The DaiBiJin. I haven't put much time into it yet, and I'll probably go into these in a more in-depth post later, but it's about a bikini clad beach girl who gets bitten by an alien and grows 50 stories tall and starts rampaging Japan. How can you go wrong? : )

After much shopping and watching of anime, it was back to the hotel room to unwind a bit. Hmmm...the room is nice and all, but it needs something else...

Ah, much better. Who needs to unwind when you've got a Mac full of ROMs? With the day behind us, Ghibli_Geek and I went through our bags, seeing what we picked up in our non-stop spend-fest. I picked up a couple of the new line of Final Fantasy trading arts figures, which come packed in identical boxes, so you never know which you'll get until you open them. What has fate decided for me? Zidane from Final Fantasy IX and Selphie from Final Fantasy VIII! Actually, Zidane was the one character out of all of them that I was hoping to get the most, so hooray! (the picture was too blurry to include here, sorry!)

Since I'd gotten most of my shopping out of my system on the first day, the second day's trip through the dealer's room was more window-shopping and taking pics of cosplayers shopping.

There was a bit of Chrono Trigger love out there. I saw two Chronos, and Frog here. I was pretty impressed with the head they'd made. And while I didn't waste much time with the countless Soras to be found, a Halloween Sora is totally different! Every chance I got, I would once again pass by Mad Gear LLC to see if anything else had been put out. Day Two offering?

The Tabletop Game and Watch edition of Snoopy. I didn't ask how much it was, and I'm not really sure why. If it were a reasonable price, I most certainly would have bought it. I own the Popeye one from back when that was released and I loved it. I'm interested in seeing what kind of gameplay this one offered. Wizzywig is a pretty popular import seller for various Japanese goods, and they had some pretty cool stuff on hand this year too. Minish Cap cell phone straps would only set you back $2.50, and Animal Crossing keychain thingies were $4.50. And the Nintendo plushies were out in full force!

On the way out of the dealer's room I got a couple more cosplayers' photos. Sometimes it's fun when a cosplayer tries to get as exact as they can with their costume to make it look just like the game or anime it came from. But sometimes it's fun to see them change up the characters to better suit them. Case in point? Hot...Shy...Guy...

Cute pink outfit? White fishnet stockings? And not pictured here, but written on her ass is "2 shy", which I felt would have been crossing a line if I'd snapped a photo of that.

So later in the evening we decided to take an anime break and hit the game room. They have everything here you could want. Arcade machines? Yup. Dreamcast, Saturn, SNES, N64, blah blah blah? Yup, they were all here too. The atmosphere was pretty dark so you'd be able to see screens pretty well. Unfortunately that meant my photos all turned out blurry. It was really hard to show just how massive this room is. Halo 2 matches were being played on projector screens. Smash Bros and Mario Kart DD were on big screens. It was beautiful.

Click the pic for a video!

Lines were the name of the game here, since anyone could just sit down and play for as long as they wanted. Most of my time here was just spent walking around checking stuff out, but Ghibli_Geek and I did partake of a little Taiko Drum Master, which was fun, even if neither of us performed very well. Click the above pic for a short video of me standing in one corner of the game room. I don't even think you can see the projection screens on the far side of the hall. The long line to the left is for DDR, which I'd already waited in forever and embarrassed myself in last year, so I decided to skip it this time.

The third day was a short one, as the con officially closes at 3. But on the third day I finally ran in to the cosplayer I was hoping would show up again this year. Last year, by far my favorite cosplayer was someone dressed up in a Purple Tentacle costume from Maniac Mansion 2: Day of the Tentacle. It looked great. I hadn't seen him the first two days and figured he just wasn't here this year. But then I saw him! Purple Tentacle was back and this year instead of being an insane mutant tentacle, he was fighting for truth and justice...in Hyrule!

PS - Note the symbol on his shield! And with that, the wonderful Otakon 2006 came to a close. Like I said, I tried to just focus on the videogame aspects of it for the purpose of this blog. I'll probably talk about the anime at a different time. I was going to list the titles that we watched while we were there, but since I can't find my schedule right now, I'll have to edit them in later. Hope you all enjoyed my rundown of the cool stuff found at Otakon 2006!

"Buy Somthin' Will Ya!"

So after much labor-of-loving, I've finished my first t-shirts and put them up on my new site available for sale. I've worked hard at thinking of what I myself would want to wear to show my gamer nature. I decided that some of the best ideas are the most subtle. These are shirts that people not in the know are not going to get, but that makes it all the cooler when someone knows what the shirts mean. So may I introduce you to...

Admitidly the site is looking a bit bare right now. I was trying to get it up and running before I left for Otakon last Thursday (which will be the topic of my next blog, it should be fun!). So soon I shall be adding a nice pic to the main page there, spruce the place up a bit. Right now there are four shirts available, with four or five more to come in the near future, all of which I'm really excited about. So go there, let me know what you think, and if you like what you see, go ahead and buy something. You can click on the logo above to get there, or the preview pic below.

Farmer's Market Finds II: Electric Boogaloo

Ah, the weekend was fast approaching, and with a small amount of spendable money in my pocket, I figured it was about time I took a trip back to my local farmer's market to see what worthwhile video games I could come upon. I may not have walked away with as many titles, but I'd say at least two of them are noteworthy, and the other one...well, I just love anything Ghostbusters.

A little more spacious than usual...

Ghibli_Geek and I had been planning on returning to the farmer's market for about a week now, but with off and on downpours of rain on Saturday, it was looking pretty bleak as to whether Sunday would be any better. Luckily, the rain had let up to a slight drizzle by Sunday morning and we were on our way. Unfortunately, the chance of rain seemed to have scared off most of the usual vendors. Guess they didn't want to risk paying for a table then not using it. Lucky for us, a lot of the video game vendors were still pushing their wares.

Is this a sequel, or just a port of a really frustrating title? For $10, I'll never know.

Our first stop was at the vendor that had the hundreds up on hundreds of NES and SNES titles from our last trip. After a little bit of talking, he once again offered to show us the "good stuff" that he kept in his van, his more sought-after SNES games. And there they were again, Super Mario RPG and Final Fantasy III, two of many titles I'd regret selling off for the rest of my lift, staring right at me. Last time I turned the cart over to peer at the label, I couldn't work up the nerve to say anything to him. When coming out this time, I'd kinda worked a scenario up in my head where I'd offer him something like $45 for the pair, and he'd happily agree. That scenario was shaken up a bit when I enquired if the price of $45 for Super Mario RPG was indeed correct. He assured me it was. Then I turned over Final Fantasy III...$166. Folks, let me tell you, a great game this may be, but that is more than twice what it should be worth to ANYBODY. And let me reiterate that this is cartridge only. He may have a great selection, but you know what? The prices on all of his games are a bit higher than I'd care to pay. I think last time when I came here I was a bit more enthralled with how many titles I was seeing, but this time I was scrutinizing price a bit more, and his stand just isn't as good a find as I'd like. A small aside, while I was browsing, a little boy inquired as to how much the used Nintendo DS was. His answer? $129.99. For the old model DS, not the Lite, and not in a box! Sorry sir, I'm afraid I'll have to look elsewhere.

Who ya gonna...well, you know.

The next stand was where I purchased Little Nemo for NES last time. Their selection's pretty nice, and their prices are certainly reasonable. Unfortunately this time there seemed to be pretty unremarkable NES titles. I did, however, find a copy of Ghostbusters for the Genesis for $3, which I, being a lover of anything with the little no-ghost logo, quickly snatched up. That makes two Genesis titles now in my possession, and me still without a Genesis. Something I plan on rectifying as soon as I can, believe me. The other title I own for the Sega 16-bit system is Jurassic Park, which made another find at this stand a curiosity for me: Jurassic Park Rampage Edition. Now, I love me some Jurassic Park, and I happen to know for a fact that rampaging dinosaurs are a fun factor multiplier of like, 107%. It's a scientific fact, look it up. So what does the Rampage Edition entail? Is it a new game, or a revision? Is it worth a purchase if I have the normal, non-Rampage, Tame-Dinos-Only Edition? I must know!

This week, on a very special Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs decide to go on a rampage.

I also picked up Rayman2 for my N64 while I was at this stand for $7. I'm a big fan of Rayman, but I've never played his sequel. I was holding out for the Dreamcast version of part 2, just because it would have better visuals, I'd imagine. But for $7, and with it standing right in front of me with its inexplicable green cartridge, I couldn't say no. Sold, good sir!

Earthworm Jim! He's such a groovy guy!

Speaking of sequels to great games I've never played (never played the sequels, mind, not the great original game), I found a shiny yellow N64 cartridge of Earthworm Jim 3D. I had a vague recollection of Jim going into the third dimension, but I've long since forgotten it, and I'm assuming most others have as well, since all I ever hear talk of is the first two. So I've gotten a green N64 cartridge and a yellow. Nintendo seems to have gone a little bit color crazy. I only remember there being a few colored games; Zelda in gold, Perfect Dark in black, and Donkey Kong 64 in banana yellow (the same color as Earthworm Jim's game here). Looks like they started distributing the color cartridges a bit looser than I thought.

What is it what is it???

As we finished making the rounds, I came across a game that will forever haunt me, as I looked at it, held it in my hands, and then placed it back on the blanket it was resting on. What game was it? Beats me! Both the front and top label of this Super NES cartridge had been taken off. It could have been anything! It could have been Earthbound 5! Or, much more likely, a copy of Home Alone 2 or something equally horrible. But I can't believe I passed up the Mystery Cartridge! If it's there when I go back, I'm so getting it.

Mario Pinball!

Now normally I avoid going to the indoor part of the farmer's market for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it smells a tad like urine. But on the way back to the car I noticed there was an arcade sign. Hoping there was another used game place inside, we decided to investigate. What we found instead was indeed an actual Arcade, with some classic titles mixed in with a few not-too-old titles. In the very back was a line of pinball machines, including Super Mario World! Sweet!

As we headed towards the exit to escape the musky odors that waft through the halls, Mario once again reared his head in the least likely of places. Ladies and gentlemen, I present for your viewing pleasure...the "Super Hustla" T-shirt.

If a picture's worth a thousand words...

Thank you and goodnight!

Play an early Portal now!

So I'm assuming that many of you have already seen this video for Valve's upcoming Portal, a first-person puzzle game in which you place two portals in a room and can walk between them. Needless to say, many people seem excited about it, and with good reason. It's these kinds of new concepts that are sorely needed in today's games. With this one game mechanic Valve can open up lots of new ways to play and interact within our virtual worlds. But some of you might not know that you can play a concept demo of Portal right now...

All points lead here.

Called Narbacular Drop, this game was created by a group of seniors at the DigiPen school as a final project. Many of the developers who made this game now work at Valve and are working on Portal. This game is very fun for the short amount of time you play it, requiring you to do things like place a portal on the ground under a crate and having that crate fall through a portal in the ceiling to land on a switch, or the rather challenging section in which you have to cross hot lava by putting a portal on the ceiling above a pillar, then one below you and hope your aim was accurate, as you fall through the floor and (hopefully) above the distant pillar. There's no save, but at just five or six levels, you really won't need it. I for one couldn't get enough of the unique gameplay mechanics and went through the game rather quickly. A word to the wise, you may want to go into options before playing and up the resolution a bit.

Looking through a portal whose other end is above me.

As if that's not enough, there is also a level editor, so you can continue making crazy-ass levels and share them with your friends! Unfortunately, as I write this, the official page where the level editor is located is down (looks like enough people realized Portal comes from this game!). I was lucky enough to get the editor before their bandwidth limit was exceeded though, so I'm anxious to play around with it.

Overall, this is a great game concept, and it feels refreshing to see new talent emerging with original ideas for how to play. While the game is short, it's really fun while it lasts, and it's free. The levels all look the same however, and I hope that in the level editor there is a way to make new textures and environments in case I don't want my level to take place in an underground cavern. I highly recommend you all download this and give it a playthough, and make some new exciting levels when the editor comes back online!

Cranky Old Gamer on Final Fantasy VII

So I feel my Cranky Old Gamer side has been boiling up for quite some time now, and I guess it's time to rant before he pops. The topic in question? Final Fantasy...VII. It seems an article or blog can't talk about this game without saying 'the most popular of the series' or even 'the greatest role playing game ever'. Come on, people! Not only do I *not* feel this is the best RPG ever, I'd rank this game as my 5th, yes fifth, favorite Final Fantasy title! What shall I nitpick first? Oh, I feel like a kid in a candy store suddenly!

Transration

Final Fantasy VI was a beautifully translated game. Nintendo knew the importance of the title and had its own translation team hard at work making sure the dialogue in the game sounded natural and clear. It really helped draw you into the game as the characters revealed their inner secrets, their hopes, and their dreams. Then Final Fantasy VII came out...

...Wow. I think you can really feel for the crossing gate of her heart in this scene. And let's not forget Barret, who channels Mr. T through the majority of the game:

I haven't done the exact calculations, but I think he starts at least 33.33% of his sentences with "The hell you..." Riveting dialogue indeed. If that were all, I would certainly not make such a long-winded speech about how over-hyped this game is. Next let's look at...

Art Direction

...or lack thereof. Most people when insulting the art will say things like how the characters during the majority of the game lack hands, instead having their arms end in stumps, or how it's a bit jarring to see the super-deformed versions of the characters suddenly turn into realistic counterparts when in battle mode or during cinema scenes. But I'm looking beyond that, because let's face it, it was a transitional period for the team, and they were still finding the best way to represent the characters in different situations. What I have a problem with is the lack of a competent background design throughout the entire game. What parts of the background, like pipes or ladders or ramps, should I be paying attention to or interacting with? Beats me, since a pipe that can't be climbed on looks just like a pipe that can. This is something that has been handled competently since the days before the NES. The background artist should be able to use placement, color and lighting to clue the user into what to look at. The user probably won't even realize he or she is be instructed what to view as important, their eye should naturally be drawn to something significant.

How do I know that this wasn't just a case of me being an idiot? They put in an optional overlay to tell you what is interactive and where the exits are!

"Call me whenever you're walking around confused." Believe me, that can be quite often. With the press of a button, a series of arrows will appear on screen, showing exits and interactive objects. With the option off, which is how I played most of the game, you can often miss important items or a ladder in the background you can use. Turn it on, and in some screens be assaulted with three or five arrows on the screen, which kind of ruins the whole "realistic" look of the game.

Mini-"Games" and Side Quests

I put the games up there in quotes because, well, I was always under the impression that games were meant to be fun. But apparently when they're "mini", they are held under less rigorous standards. How many of you out there played that snowboarding game in the arcade more than once? SSX that was not. But the big offender was the Chocobo Racing, and with it, the breeding! What made this "game" particularly bad was that if you wanted the best summons materia in the game, you had no choice but to play it. And play it again. And again! The materia is only accessible with a Gold Chocobo. And the only way to get one is to breed it. This consists of catching chocobos, taking them back to the stables, buying lots of various foods for them and stuffing it down their throats. The stables alone, which you will need to fill with chocobos, cost 10,000 gil a piece. And the greens and nuts you feed them cost a fortune too. So right off the bat, half of this "game" is fighting monster upon monster to quickly earn cash.

After doing all of that nonsense, you also have to train the chocobos in the races to get them stronger in various attributes. The races are interesting, because at times you'll feel that you're controlling the chocobo, and at others you'll feel that at best you're offering him a meek suggestion of what to do. What I'm saying is that this is not a fun racing game, and you'll be playing it a LOT if you want to breed a gold chocobo. Then there's the fact that when you breed two chocobos, you're still leaving a lot up to chance.

All told, I believe I spent about a week and a half doing nothing in the game but the gold chocobo side quest. Just catching, feeding, killing monsters for gil, racing breeding, repeat. I was at the very end of the game, and just wanted that one materia before going in for the final battle. So this one little side quest and racing "game" took my gaming enjoyment to a screeching halt for a good ten days as I just repeated the same monotonous work over and over. Way to ruin the narrative flow there, guys!

Now I'd like to end this Cranky Old Gamer post on a positive note, since I realize I may have said a few harsh words about what is a beloved game to many. If you'll recall at the beginning of this rant I mentioned that FFVII is probably my 5th favorite of the Final Fantasy games. That's out of nine that I've played. For all the attitude I'm giving it, there's still a good amount of Final Fantasy magic to be found here. And to me, it's mostly in the characters themselves, which I found to be (for the most part) enjoyable enough to keep me happy and excited to be sharing in such a grand adventure with them. I was just as excited as any fan when news of Advent Children first spread, and judging from other blog posts, I came away much happier than some of its other viewers. I think this is because I really just wanted to see all these characters, these friends with whom I'd spent so many hours, together once again like old times. No crazy mini-games, no confusing backgrounds, just the people we'd grown so attached to. I feel that the opening passage of the Advent Children movie said it best (in the fansub version, which I thought sounded more heartfelt than the official release):

"Gather again and devote your time... To those who loved this world once before and spent time with its friends"

Images and "transration" quotes supplied by Zany Video Game Quotes