July 2006 Archives

Background: Some gamers have the completely ridiculous notion that the PS2 has so many JRPGs (Japanese Role Playing Games, like Final Fantasy) that it therefore doesn't have enough games from other genres. I have no idea what crazy evidence makes them think this, because I debunked their prime theories in this Slashdot comment war. The thread begins with an entertaining tete-a-tete between me and some guy. Complete original discussion here.

My conclusion is that most Xbox fanboys cannot read and that their parents still pay for their internet.

I'm about to go see Superman Returns, which means I'm about to start live-blogging it. To be frank, I'm not expecting much from this movie, because I've heard some insanely stupid things about it. Plus, the comics community hasn't exactly been bowled over... there's none of the giddy buzz like you got when the Spider-Man movie started leaking shots. Hell, comics fans are more excited about Spider-Man 3 than they ever were about Superman Returns. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to nail precisely why after I see it. The general consensus is that Superman deserves better.

10:09 I am way early. There is no one else in the theater and I wonder if that will change. Should have brought the DS. Walking down the hallway, I seriously considered jumping screens and seeing Clerks 2 or Pirates 2 instead.

10:15 Bring it On 3? Nice to see Kairi is still getting work. Sounds like my office's voice guy did the VO, which might explain why we have trouble getting scripts from him sometimes. He be mad krumpin' the skillz! Is the subtitle "all or nothing" or "straight to DVD"?

10:21 Great Sydney Pollack/Cingular "Turn Off Your Phones" ad.

10:23 Open Season. More soulless CG! Although it occurs to me that the new breed of CG animated films gets far more marketing and press than their hand drawn counterparts ever did. I mean, let's face it, this Open Season movie is the modern equivalent of that Don Bluth film with the singing cats, and I don't recall much advertising on that sorry POS.

10:29 LEGO Star Wars 2! Nice. But look, it only shows Xbox logos. What a bunch of fucking cockholes. That game is coming out for every system known to man, but this ad makes it look like a 360 exclusive.

10:33 New Fanta girls! Why wasn't I informed? This is bigger news than a third Bring It On movie.

10:35 That was the single greatest Coke spot I've ever seen. I'll never understand why companies do awesome commercials just for movie theaters.

10:40 TRAILER GET!

Invincible: Great trailer, makes me wish I knew more/cared about football.

The Ant Bully: Who cares. I'm really sick of CG just being used to animate massive group scenes of identical characters... which is why we keep getting CG movies about bugs and fish and parameciums.

The Nativity Story: I kept waiting for this one to do the old Trailer Switcheroo and become the next Austin Powers flick.

Spider-Man 3: More big zoomscapes over some element of the hero. Why do all super-hero movies have to do this. I'm looking forward to seeing Venom done like Venom.

Lady in the Water: Didn't this already bomb?

10:47 I like the new DC logo clip.

By the way, we're topping out with an audience of six. Me, another lone guy, an old husband/wife, and a teen son/his mom.

10:50 The same opening titles as the 1978 movie! Ugh. I'm already weary of this film and we haven't even gotten to "Kevin Spacey."

10:54 That's the Luthor setup? He faked a relationship with a rich old bag? This movie already sucks.

11:00 This is why the Silver Age Superman had a giant key to open up his Fortress of Solitude... so you didn't have dogsled teams just walking in and watching his home movies.

11:02 I do not get this Brando thing at all. It's not like he gave such a bravura performance that America just HAD to see it again, twenty five years later. The boring super-intelligent monologuist Krypton of the 1978 movie was awful, and here we are being forced to revisit it.

11:05 Great cast on Young Clark Kent. That kid looks like he stepped right out of a Silver Age Superboy story.

11:11 The space plane stuff is great, and a nice nod to post-Crisis continuity, where the whole "Lois trapped on the space plane" bit is a big deal. I like how Lois right away asks a stupid question and gets shot down by the marketroid.

11:14 I was so repulsed by the puppy-eating-puppy thing that I totally missed Lex's plan.

11:17 The NASA madhouse scene. If this was a Marvel movie, this would be the Stan Lee cameo.

11:28 I like humble Supes. Unfortunately, this movie seems to confuse that with just making him stupid and boring. Is he ever going to act like a human being in this movie?

11:30 "How many Fs in 'catastophe'?" Boy, they sure aren't giving us any reason to think Lois might actually be an intelligent woman. How'd she get that Pulitzer anyway? Tokenism?

11:38 Dude is back on Earth for a day and all he can do is moon over his old girlfriend. That's just sad, and it's a lame hook to hang on. "Superman has been away and he misses Lois!" Please. To make matters worse, his deep blue funk about not getting laid seems to make him not want to be Superman, which is pathetic.

I like that he interrupted the filming of Die-Hard 4.

11:51 Superman missed a court date and that's why Luthor was freed. That is balls-out stupid. This movie has no idea who Superman truly is, allowing him to play the moron just to get us from thin plot point to thinner plot point. The Superman that I have been reading for decades would easily have postponed his Hunt for Krypton long enough to see Lex behind bars. Without a second thought. Shit, even if sticking around for the trial would have cost Superman his one shot at finding Merrie Olde Krypton, he would have done it... because Superman always sacrifices his good for the sake of others.

This movie could have had Lex escape from prison, or he could have lawyered his way out of prison... instead we have Superman being an idiot and not showing up as a witness. Awful.

11:56 Come on, scan her for lung cancer, you boy scout.

What is so obviously absent from the big Lois + Clark = Angst scene is that nobody bothers to understand why Superman had to go see Krypton. Lois is completely selfish about it and doesn't even attempt to understand why it was necessary... and Superman, being an idiot, doesn't try to explain it. This could have been another beat in the "lonely Superman" arc, and instead it's Superman half-assedly apologizing for leaving Lois as if his soul-searching wasn't important at all.

And holy crap, look at Lois-n-Cyclops's house. The newspaper business must pay extremely well.

12:14 Nice big Lex scene, the only time so far that Kevin Spacey has had something to do. And what is up with his henchmen blatantly acting silent? It's creepy. And probably very inexpensive.

12:19 I'm having trouble with the kid being Superman's son. It proves that this movie has no intention of being anything other than surface. After all the hand-wringing about Superman being all alone, now we're expected to believe that Kryptonian semen can safely impregnate a human egg? Then, instead of Kal-El being the sole survivor of a doomed alien civilization, he's really just the sole survivor of the Roanoke colony... because he can mate and live with people from South Carolina as easily as he could have with his native Virginians.

"I Spent the Night with Superman" was another terrible invention of the old movies and once again we're stuck to live it out today. This is a good movie made on a bad foundation.

12:23 Whee! Young Superkid's first murder!

The worst part about the presence of the sad-eyed Supertoddler is that any sequel will be forced to include Justin Timberlake as the teenaged son trying to come to terms with his powers, leading us to yet another transparent superhero puberty metaphor.

12:31 Fun chaos in the Metropolis earthquake scene. This is what Superman action is all about: amazingly unbelievable things go wrong, and he pulls off amazingly unbelievable stunts to fix it.

12:34 All right. How much longer until Cyclops dies and/or former indie It girl Parker Posey betrays Lex?

12:39 Lex's crystal island looks an awful lot like HeroScape. Without the dragons.

12:43 Oh fuck! Kumar is going to beat up Superman! Without saying a word!

12:48 You know, this new landmass seems rather easily wrecked. First, a depowered Superman rolls down a hill breaking off pieces as he goes, and now an entire spire gets clipped off by the wing of Cyclops's seaplane. Admittedly, his plane seems pretty resilent, having flown into and parked safely in the middle of Luthor's disaster zone.

12:54 I love the bongos in the Escape from HeroScape Mountain sequence.

Somebody better pick up those crystals before they get wet.

1:00 At least Metropolis can rally around their fallen hero without resorting to the cloying "Nobuddy messes wit' New York!" crap that we endured in Spider-Man 1 and 2.

Although doing a Death of Superman riff is pretty cheap at this point, and is just stretching out an already too-long film. We know he's not going to die - Warners can't sell toys of a dead guy - so why torture us with a faux question?

And if Superman can fly above the clouds and become rejuvented by the sun, why does he turn into Fainting Jesus after he tosses the island into deep space? Maybe Movie Supes needs Earth's atmosphere to filter the yellow Sun into an energy form his body can absorb. ...I should not have to manufacture fanboy answers for this movie.

Supes visits the Lane-White Estate. Now that he knows that Jason has powers, he no longer feels so alone. So he flies off into the night, presumably preparing to contact his lawyer to arrange his visitation rights. Seriously, this is really creepy. So now he knows he has a child, who has been raised by Cyclops since birth, and he suspects Lois's feelings are still conflicted... and he just flies off, somehow satisfied? At the beginning of the movie, he was so desparate to talk to Lois that he spies on her at every opportunity. Now he is okay? How does any of this make any sense? Superman, how has your life suddenly been made better?

Bryan Singer took the worst parts of the old movies (fuck, why not bring back Otis?), used the most off-putting means of modernizing the characters (absentee father), and calls himself a fan? I think I'd almost rather see the giant spider script that Kevin Smith is always talking about.

Credits. OK.

I think the big problem is that the film expects everybody to care about the canon established from the Chris Reeve Superman and Superman II. That was twenty-five goddamn years ago. Nobody wants to see a direct sequel to a twenty-five year old movie. Half the movie-going audience today hasn't even seen those films. And the other half also saw Superman III and thought it sucked. That vision - the Richard Donner vision - is dead and buried.

In the meantime, the comics versions of Superman and Lex and Lois have developed into something far different from the DC Comics world of 1970s. Post-Crisis, turning Lex Luthor into a megalomaniacal Donald Trump has become the definitive iteration of the character... surviving through clones and cancer and weight loss and even the US presidency. That is the Lex that modern comics fans have grown up with.

And it's a damn good version of the character. More complicated and sympathetic and interesting than Gene Hackman's motiveless cipher, regardless of how well Kevin Spacey plays out the homage.

Had you not seen the 1978 original, you would have no idea why Lex hates Superman. Hell, I have seen it, and even I was cringing during the "kick the shit out of Supes" scene, wondering what exactly happened between these two guys. I guess it doesn't matter why Lex hates Superman; he just does, and Bryan Singer knows that you have seen enough episodes of "Super Friends" to know that, so he doesn't have to do anything about it. At one point, Lex seems irritated that Superman won't "share [his] powers," which, on the face of it, is ridiculous. Since A) he does share his powers every day by selflessly helping people and B) how exactly does Lex expect Supes to give them to him? Some kind of DNA transfer?

In the gay-bashing scene, Lex mentions that he lost five years of his life (because of Superman), which is the only clue as to why he is so angry. Which five? Because the movie seems to indicate that he never actually went to prison anyway (since Superman missed the trial). Was it five years he spent with the old lady? Is he talking about five years from the previous movies?

By the way, naming your rich old woman character "Gertrude Vanderworth" is about the least creative thing I've seen since Bring It On 3.

I just really hate Lex Luthor being a worthless con artist with an irrational hatred of Superman, who swindled his way into money. And for a guy who constantly talks about being smarter than everybody else, all he does is steal Superman's Magic Brando Crystals and dump them in water. Jesus, Metallo could have done that. And when Lois rightly points out that other countries will come after him, he talks about having "alien technology" that will stop them. What alien technology are you referring to, Lex? More crystal dust? All I saw that do was knock the Daily Planet globe off of the roof.

The sad thing is, the movie's basic evil plot could have handily been adapted to the modern Lex... Imagine: he's a super-rich media-hungry business tycoon who decides that he can regain his lost status (since Superman blew into town and took all his press) by building his own massive island. Plus he'll make a ton of money. And Lex being Lex, he doesn't care about the damage to the city proper or the slums that will soon be underwater. Furthermore, he'll have a secret weapon up his sleeve in case Superman or the US come after him, which he is certain will not fail him, and which is why he is willing to take the risk of ruining his "good" name. And since we're already borrowing from the John Byrne years, why not have the secret weapon be Bizarro, cloned in LexCorp's hidden underground labs. In one story, you see Lex the businessman, Lex the genius, and Lex the scientist.

There would have been a lot done with Lex's natural arrogance, particularly towards the poor (who have never done anything for him anyway). Lex's plan would begin under the innocent facade of creating a man-made resort island with affordable housing, so Metropolis would initially be behind the project. Cue shot of citizens standing in front a dozen televisions in a store window, watching Lex shake hands with Mayor Sonny Bono. But of course, Lex gets greedy, his true plan is exposed, and Superman stops him.

In five minutes, I just outlined a more believable, more modern, more nuanced version of Lex's plan. In contrast, Movie Lex's plan is ineffable to the point of cartoonish, outlandish after even the merest examination (who is going to do all the construction work?), and is never even revealed to Metropolis at large. All they see is an earthquake, which amounts to nothing more than the dust getting shaken off the buildings. The people of Metropolis are nothing more than panicky set dressing.

Although I believe Lex to be the most abused character in the film, let's look at Lois and Clark. Both are gut-churningly stupid throughout. Lois is the intrepid reporter who can't spell, asks terrible questions at press conferences, might pass for being 16 years old in pumps, and has yet to figure out that Clark = Superman. At least Margot Kidder looked and acted like she might actually be employed as a beat reporter.

Clark is a bumbling office prop who does nothing but stutter in the face of his secret crush and mug at people from across the room. Once again, we are hamstrung by the 1978 version. People, there is nothing wrong with Clark Kent being a confident and capable figure. It may have once been funny to know that powerful Superman disguises himself as a nebbishy dork, but now it is just annoying. This is why, in the comics, Clark revealed his secret to Lois years ago (and married her!) Because to keep doing stories otherwise means Lois is actually a retard, and Clark has to keep acting like one.

And what was the point of having Lois's boyfriend be Perry's nephew and also a Daily Planet employee? Why either, and why both? Just so we have an easy excuse to keep the kid nearby, because the folks continually take advantage of the Planet's liberal in-office daycare policy? Cyclops dies in the sequel, I'm calling that now.

Look, I'm spoiled. I get better Superman stories every week at my local comics shop. And I always become irritated when something like this shows up and proves to the general movie-going public that comics are nothing more than simplistic, predictable action stories. Superman Returns is not going to convince any adult to check out a Superman comic in the way that seeing The DaVinci Code might inspire someone to read the original novel.

But here's where I go psycho on you, because I liked it, sort of. I'm being intensely nitpicky about it, because I hold the character to a higher standard than I do, say, the Fantastic Four or the X-Men (although I think I liked FF better, for just that reason... the cheesiness made it fun, while Superman's cheesiness made it disappointing). But there are some worthwhile scenes that make up for all the dreck. And by the end, I found myself okay with whisper-thin Brandon Routh's imitation of Christopher Reeve, at least in a pure acting sense. Even if he is awfully young and nowhere near big enough to match the comics' vision. It just should have been much better. There's some great, appropriately staggering action... I'll even allow the punctured romance... but the kid, the stupidity, and the cliche Luthor have got to go.

ADDENDUM: The best Superman Returns fan-ponderings I've found come from the weblog Dave's Long Box, from the comments page found here. This is my favorite quote from the discussion:

So... Since Supes kissed Lois in Superman 2, making her forget everything that transpired between them in the film... once the heritage of her son became obvious in Superman Returns, wouldn't she have wondered when Superman boned her?

Did she whisper "I know you raped me in my sleep" during the hospital scene?

LOgoddamnL to that.

Although I was planning to get to Toys R Us on Sunday to try out the ACWW download thing, I decided that, for once, I did not want to be the first guy in the door asking all the tough questions. Like when they didn't bother to put Metroid Prime out for sale, or when they asked me to tell the aisle clerk to put Pokemon Pinball on the racks or the time they bungled my Double Dash bonus disk pre-order, or tried to sell Pokemon Channel for $50, or when they barely participated in LeafGreen/FireRed Trade and Battle Day... and don't forget how they all but buried the original DS launch. These guys are great.

So we went Monday night. Give them a day to have somebody else be the insistent asshole. On the way there, I was mentally preparing myself for dejection. "They're not going to have this," I said in the parking lot as we strapped Clark into the Ergo carrier. "They don't even have a Download Station." The only small hope I held came from this week's sales flyer, which mentioned a "free Animal Crossing download" in small print. Of course, a sales flyer doesn't have to mean jack at the local level.

I did not stop at the customer service desk, although it did occur to me that they might have hidden the Download Station there so that they could answer questions about it. I went straight for the video game section.

Going up the game aisles (no R'Zone at this store, just old school flip tags), nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The best I could find was a promo to get some terrible ATV game for free with your DS purchase. So I circled around to the glass case zone, where they have been putting all the really expensive equipment since the 32X launch.

And there it was.

One corner of the glass case held the Download Station and was covered in signage. Happy! But, this being MY Toys R Us, the poor thing is exposed to the elements; the secret white case was cracked open for all to see. It's not especially classy to display an old fat DS with DOS text on the screen, but I guess my TRU enjoys taking the mystery out of life.

As do I. There's going to be some pretty substantial spoilers coming up, so you might want to back out now if you enjoy MEGATON surprises and have faith that your TRU will have some kind of clue that this is happening.

Hilariously, the instructions for the ACWW giveaway are lying flat inside the case. On the top shelf, where no child can see them.

Thrilled that this is actually going to happen, I got right to the business of downloading Animal Crossing junk. Thrilled that the kids clothes were just his height, Clark got right to the business of pulling jumpers off the racks and handing them to Mommy.

We're not exactly out of the woods yet, because, this being Animal Crossing, there is an incredibly laborious procedure involved. You need to buy a bunch of Bottle Mail, because this is presented (in-game) as you sending a message in a bottle out to sea, and then having someone else - Nintendo - send you a bottled message in reply.

In my bottle mail, I wrote "thanks TRU" or something equally ingratiating. Towards the end, I was doing "OMG I JUST NEED ONE MORE."

Then you toss the bottle into the ocean (just one), save and quit. Then you go into Tag Mode and you get a reply almost immediately.

So it's back to your town to search the beach for the new bottle that has surely washed up on the sands.

All in all, a lengthy process. I was there for an hour and did it eleven times. Because, as you could have guessed, there are SIX exclusive furniture items and they are distributed randomly. Since the Download Station was in full view, I could see how many times it had been accessed that day (twice, until I showed up, which is kinda sad) but not which item was coming up next. I received three 1-UP Mushrooms, two Fire Bars, one Flagpole, one Question Box, two Starmen and two Green Pipes. Here's what they look like:

The rotating Fire Bars are quite fun, and every item comes with its own signature sound effects and music.

I'm fairly certain this is not the entire Mario Series (carpet? wallpaper? brick box?), but it remains to be seen what cockamamie way Nintendo will choose to distribute any additional items. Not to mention how long it could take them to get to it. I'm thinking Wii bonus downloads.

But now for the crazy part. This is Spoiler Level Two.

Tonight I jump back into the game to do some redecorating in case anybody shows for Thursday's Open Gate Night, and I notice a new animal villager. A monkey. Not the usual gorilla, but a chimpanzee type very similar to Porter from the original Animal Crossing.

"That's neat," I think, "Didn't know the game had chimps in villager rotation."

I figure the chimp is one of ACWW's new rare pair animals, like the two octopi or cows, and I just never noticed her in the Player's Guide. Now, I have no idea when she could have appeared, since I stopped talking to villagers weeks ago. So I talk to her, and she says her name is Elise and she is from the town of Nintendo.

"That's cute," I think, "Some kid named his town Nintendo."

A few minutes later, it occurs to me that I don't know anyone with a town name of "Nintendo."

At this point, I'm like Tom Hanks in the DaVinci Code. I dig up that awful Player's Guide to see if there are any monkeys in there. I look up and down my Friend List for town names. And like the All-Seeing Eye on the back of every dollar bill, I suddenly consider that Elise appeared in my game thanks to the Toys R Us stunt. It certainly explains the message inside the bottle:

When I read that at the store, I didn't give it two seconds of thought. This is Animal Crossing. You get that Mad Lib kind of crap all the damn time. Especially from Katrina.

One last thing. As I was running around my town tonight, something very odd happened. I think I fell, or something, because my character stopped, some sad music played, and then something floated into the air. I'm being vague because it all happened behind a tree. After the music ended, the game warped me back to my front door. Is this some other, pranky aspect to the TRU download? (UPDATE: I was bitten by a tarantula! Nothing unusual about that at all.)

One thing's for sure, the Player's Guide won't know anything about it. But three cheers to Nintendo for making this completely worth everybody's time.

As I mentioned last time, attending the Pokemon Rocks World Forever Blitz Reunion Tour inspired me to finally make good on "beating" Pokemon Sapphire. IE, it was time to Catch 'Em All.

This required two Ruby reboots (because my original Ruby game was already way past the starter types). Luckily, you can trade pokemon between games after about 15 minutes of play, so it was short work to generate a Mudkip and a Torchic.

Somehow, I already had the final evolutions of both of those. This was probably due to some trade finagling with fellow trainers - trade me a Swampert and I'll trade him right back! - that sort of trick. So I just had to run the young Torchic and Mudkip around in my party for a bit so they would evolve into their middle level monsters.

Then came the disappointment.

You'll recall a hotel in Lilycove City ("Remember us as COVE LILY of LILYCOVE," the sign reads.) The game's designers like to hide themselves into each Pokemon game, and this hotel is their home in the R/S line. Early in the game, if you talk to these guys, they'll say something like "You're working on a pokedex! Great! Come see us when you have it finished!"

And you're like, shyeah, when it's finished.

But at last, after completing the pokedex due to my own hard work and well-orchestrated trades, it was time to see the Game Freak team and show off my completed Hoenn Pokedex.

Sorry for the crappy picture. I was at work when I did this and did not have my good camera nearby.

What that says is "This Pokedex is completely filled! You must really love Pokemon!"

Then he says "I want to give you something!" And you're all quivery with excitement...

"This document certifies that you have successfully completed your Pokedex."

This is IT?!?! This is all I get for catching over 200 different species of pokemon? I honestly was expecting the guy to give me some kind of special boat pass so I could go catch Deoxys or something equally cool. You don't even get a mention on your Trainer Card.

Nope. Here's a certificate. Hope ya had fun, kid. That'll teach me to not look this kind of junk up online first.

What is it with Nintendo refusing to reward players for extreme diligence?

Time: 158:52
Badges: 8
Pokedex: 205 (Seen: 205) (including Celebi!)
Party: Marshtomp lv16, Tropius lv31, Golduck lv58, egg, egg

Banking that this would just be a tennis variant with bikini gals, Beach Spikers become one of the very few sports titles to grace my library.

This was about half a year before Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball came out for the Xbox, but this little GameCube exclusive did absolutely nothing to steal any heat from that game. The fact that Beach Spikers had no franchise tie-in (aside from a few Sega references) probably did not help.

Man, it is crazy to think of how games advance during each generation. If you dropped a volleyball game today with limited tournament options, a lackluster create-a-player mode, weird unplayable minigames, and a stilted CPU-controlled camera... at $50... it would be like printing a formal request for bankruptcy. During each cycle, we expect more - and we get more - from our games as time goes by. It almost makes you want to not buy anything until the midway point. Almost.

Anyway, Beach Spikers is a cozy, fun title... faithfully leaping into the Cube's early multiplayer must-haves list. Takes a round to get used to the timing on your button presses, and occasionally the camera will choose the wrong angle (so you get used to keeping an eye on the overhead player position radar map), but overall a worthy party game.

And it is far classier than the infamous DOA game, choosing to use realistic (if attractive) female volleyball player models, rather than over-the-top anime cheesecake. Which, in the end, didn't help sales.

Memory Score: Some of the worst voice over editing in this generation.

Mario adventure titles are the high watermark of any Nintendo system. These are the games that receive the company's greatest efforts and, in turn, they maintain Nintendo's stellar reputation. Not counting all the sidebar Mario sub-franchises and re-releases, Nintendo usually only does one of these per console. So it's a patented Big Deal when they appear.

Unfortunately, in modern times Nintendo has found itself in the high-class problem of being the company that everybody loves to hate... so even their biggest games are relentlessly skewered by both the critics (who have decided that Nintendo needs to fail) and the fanboys (who have decided that Nintendo will never live up to the games of yore). When something like Mario Sunshine appears, there is always this brief bubble of gushing (it's beautiful, it's fun, it's innovative, it's a masterpiece) followed immediately by trendy bashing and nitpicking (it's derivative, it's boring, it's fundamentally flawed, and when you zoom the camera all the way in you can see jaggies).

Today, no one will speak warm words about Super Mario Sunshine. If you never saw a sales chart, you'd think this was a failure on par with Superman 64. People hate the water jetpack. People hate the minimalist story. People hate the lack of level theme variety. People hate the camera. People hate how it's not enough like Mario 64. People hate how it's too much like Mario 64.

I thought it was a great game, a GameCube necessity. A sumptuous, varied, scalable fiesta of a game, suitable for GTA-esque stretches of happy, shiny screwing around. Mario Sunshine may have challenged me, it may have frustrated me (damn those old school jumping levels!), but it never disappointed me.

I am now alone but happy on Isle Delfino.

Memory Score: Mario: the textbook example of a man victimized by his own success

I've been gripped by games before. I've immersed myself into game worlds for hours upon hours. But nothing to date compares to what Animal Crossing did to me.

This game took over my real life for over a year. When I looked at the clock, I always mentally computed how many hours I had left until Nook's closed. I took days off work so I wouldn't miss any afternoon holiday events. I started what became a rather famous online diary, which began as pure fan-fiction and then turned into a post-modern analysis of the game's potential. I fastidiously tracked missing items, and never missed a chance to find them (even if the game refused to give them up). I traded furniture with fellow players from all over the world. I scanned eCards by the bushelful, and made extra in-game money by plugging in my GBA. I autopsied this game, I examined it from every angle, I pushed it to the (non-cheating) limits.

All in about twenty minutes a day.

After playing all these trial-by-error, high pressure, stats-tracking, intense adventure, one-shot-kill, action games... it's just so nice to play a game that simply doesn't expect you to do anything. There's no arrow demanding you head in that direction. There's no locked door waiting for a hidden key. There's no timer counting down the seconds to a Game Over.

There's no Game Over.

There's not even a Game.

It is a zen koan in video game form.

And yet, Animal Crossing can drive you mad if you let it. Because so many other video game trappings have been excised, you start expecting perfection. Why is letter writing such a chore? Why is my inventory limited? Why do we keep having the same conversations? Why can't I influence the game's random methods of item distribution? Why did my most favorite villager of all just move out?

Animal Crossing is The Sims without micro-management, Harvest Moon without purpose, GTA without the missions, and a MMORPG without the MMO part. It is a relaxing, slow-drip game... made for casual players, yet maddeningly perfect for the hardcore types who have to collect every item and see every corner. It is Nintendo's most spectacularly innovative contribution to video gaming in the last decade.

Memory Score: There is no "extra life"... just your life

Next time: One of my favorite series makes a disappointing next-gen debut, a forgotten franchise gambles heavily and wins big, and a rare Nintendo pre-order bonus.

Finally, an answer to the question of When Will We Get More Secret ACWW Stuff?

At Toys R Us, in an ill-conceived and under-promoted and all around Far Too Late good idea.

Ever since the spring ticked by with very little free WiFi gifting by Nintendo, I've been consumed with the notion that Nintendo just does not care about living up to the game's promise. At every turn, they screw it up. You can only have eight patterns (and then one character shows up trying to get you to use his pre-made designs). You're maxed at four emotions. Tool usage is cumbersome. The holiday schedule is boring and unrewarding. The Player's Guide is embarassingly devoid of actual information. Item distribution (via travelling vendors) is even more random than in the GameCube version. The Flower Fest is distressingly unfathomable. There is almost nothing to do during online multiplayer except obnoxious one-line no-scrollback chat.

We know the game is packed with secret items that you can only get from Nintendo or by cheating. And to date, Nintendo has delivered ONE of them, the Mario Coin. The players' sentiment seems neatly summed up by this hilarious poll on Animal Crossing Community.

So here we are, seven months after the game's release, and all of a sudden Nintendo sends out an email that mentions exclusive ACWW downloads at Toys R Us. Starting this Sunday. I will bet Bells that my local TRU will not have the slightest idea what I am talking about when I march in there Sunday morning with my DS Lite.

"Downloads, sir? Do you mean, like, from our website?"

I'll be reporting on this sure-to-be glorious adventure soon. My store doesn't even HAVE a DS Download Station.

What's supposed to happen is this: you write up a quick bottle mail, then throw your game into Tag Mode. The magic WiFi blanket will sense your Tagginess and give you a reply bottle containing one of six items from the famed Mario furniture series.

Do I even need to ask if the six items will be chosen randomly? Will I have to spend half an hour at TRU sending out bottle mail and restarting, in hopes of getting all six items? If my store even knows what's going on? Will it be one item per day? Will it be one item per store? Could Nintendo have found a dickier way to do this?

The only good sign is that you can buy as much bottle mail paper as you want, but I'm sure Nintendo will bone this somehow.

What is it about Animal Crossing that has Nintendo so dead-set on keeping players from getting rare stuff? It's not like they have a MMORPG world economy to worry about. It's not a competition. Getting rare furniture should be difficult, but not impossible.

And why haven't they been doing this all along? Why blow out six items in one stealth marketing week at Toys R Us? I had hoped that Nintendo would remedy the ultra crappy holiday selection with monthly WiFi mailings... maybe not a rare item every time, but a little something to keep everybody feeling like this really is an online community. We received that Mario Coin around New Year's, and a goddamn daffodil for Mother's Day. Exuent. Was the Red Tulip scandal enough to bust up any future plans for online item distribution?

How are we intended to get that awesome Pikmin item?!? The optimist in me says they're saving that for the Wii's demo download service, since I highly doubt we'll see Animal Crossing Wii before late 2007.

Just when I think that all is lost with the Animal Crossing franchise... the news about an Animal Crossing movie breaks.

OK, I know, it's not like there's a ton of plot in either game. But there is a multitude of distinct, fun characters. I'm sure this is meant to lead into a full anime series, which strikes me as a natural fit. What are the chances that the movie (which has a Japan release date this December) will get an English dub? Who is Nintendo in bed with these days, animation wise? FOX has Kirby, Warners has Pokemon... maybe Cartoon Network would like an AC TV show as part of their tweenies block. If they skew the movie/show young and friendly (which I'm positive it will be), it's surely worth the likes of Hamtaro.

Somebody should figure out how to beam DS downloads out of a normal TV signal, like those new(ish) Batman toys.

Just cleaning out some photos off the ol' Sidekick 2...

Here is my son reading a Chibi-Robo mini-magazine while at Toys R Us. It's like his first Nintendo Power.

Here is Clark slumming on the Lowly Worm ride near the TRU exit. They used to have a much cooler ride there, but they replaced it with this less-flashy Richard Scarry thing.

And now we're at Wal-Mart (Clark is avoiding the camera), laughing at this Superman kids' lunch bag. I think they're being totally serious with that little safety tag.

I watched Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children a couple weeks ago and really enjoyed it. But it was a weird kind of enjoyment, since I've never played a single Final Fantasy game.

No, I don't believe Crystal Chronicles counts.

Being a video game fan, sheer osmosis has given me more than a passing familiarity with the characters... but there is a definite advantage to having played FF7 before viewing Advent Children. Although I thought the movie cool as hell, I'm sure I would have felt a far greater emotional attachment had I personally lived through Cloud's initial adventure. As it was, I was largely watching Advent Children for Advent Children's sake.

I did watch the entire "Reminiscence of FF7" featurette, which hits all the main story points of the game by slapping together edited sections of cutscenes. And even though it is painful to watch old PS1 era footage, I did appreciate the effort. It's funny how FF7 managed to become such an emotional flashpoint game, with its weird super-deformed art style and inconsistent visuals between gameplay and cutscene. Just goes to show how far we've come.

And I'm glad I did watch that, because Advent Children does not do much to draw in virgin viewers. This is quite obviously a sequel. Non-fans are going to have to swallow some scenes without understanding them. To its credit, it focuses almost solely on Cloud, so at the least you're given him to hold your attention, rather than playing to the fans and branching out into all the secondary characters. That is the movie's only concession to non-fans. Barret, Yuffie, Vincent, and the little cat prince dude (WTF?) show up for a big battle scene and not much else.

Once those guys did show up, that's when I realized that, for all the Final Fantasy-style internal angst and torment, Advent Children is really a super-hero film.

The movie looks freaking incredible. It's nice to see CG being used for something other than kid-friendly rubber-stamped pap. The human figures do an excellent job of riding just shy of the uncanny valley by giving some very human-looking bodies a toned-down anime look. Not to mention all the motion capture work. These are not the "real actors" of Spirits Within, nor the stylized plastic humans of Toy Story. I did not feel creeped out by watching them (well, Cid seemed off, but he was the only one). I think this is a new high watermark for CG animation, and it's a shame that comparatively nobody will see it.

Ironically, the very next day after watching Advent Children, I got to the part of Kingdom Hearts 2 where you first meet Cloud and Sephiroth. I'm sure I got more out of that scene thanks to Advent Children, since they talked about some of the same "brother" stuff.

If you'll recall, I mentioned some crazy martial arts fantasy film that we watched when we were in Seoul. Well, I found it at an Asian film store at the King of Prussia mall in the middle of the big Pokemon day.

Of course, I'm an idiot. I had pretty much assumed it was a Korean film, which is why I had no luck finding it a year ago. Turns out, it's actually a big budget action blockbuster from Hong Kong. This is what you get when you live in a country that does not typically offer television from other cultures; you start thinking that every country sticks to only showing local stuff.

So I'm at the store (kiosk, truthfully) and I'm looking over the racks for this mythically Korean action movie. The clerk (and probably owner) asks if he can help, which is the kind of shopping request I usually brush off... but I thought I'd take a shot. I was running on Pokemon adrenaline, remember.

"Yeah, I'm looking for a movie but I have no idea what it's called."
"Describe a scene to me."

That's heartening. This guy has probably seen every single movie here.

"OK, there's this king who has a daughter and there's two guys fighting over her, but he doesn't want her marrying the cool bad boy one. They all fight and the girl is accidentally killed and at one point the bad boy rips off his arm and does some kind of big blood attack."

Again, I have to stress that I originally watched this with no english voices or subtitles. Everything I know hinges on pure pantomime. My summary is worse than most of the user comments on amazon.

Dude walks over and plucks a DVD from the rack, titled "The Duel." I guess it could be it. The cover shows some guys fighting, and verifies that there are indeed men and women in this movie.

I ask how much, guy says $20 BUT he's running a two fer $30 deal. Well, all right then. So I figure I'll hedge my bets here and ask him to select something similar... this will give me two shots at finding this elusive movie. He pulls a movie called "A Man Called Hero" and I buy them both.

But as he's running the Visa, one of the jackets catches my eye, and the image percolates in my brain as I walk away.

I think that's the old king guy.

So I rush back to the kiosk and do a swap (these movies all cost the same) and trade "Hero" for "The Storm Riders."

The more I look at the actors, the more I'm convinced that this is the one. Even though the writing is obviously not Korean.

And after watching it this weekend, I can verify: that wicked arm-ripping blood attack comes from The Storm Riders, a late-90s Hong Kong epic based on a comic.

Now that I've seen it with dubbed english voices, I can say that I was fairly close with my synopsis. It's amazing how much more obtuse a film can be when you don't know the language, because this is a pretty straight forward film. There's a lot crammed in there, though, which is what makes it seem weightier than it really is. This particular DVD is a bit of a downer, since it skips at least one scene that I definitely remember from the Fourhman Korean Hotel version: the bit where Cloud (I know their names now!) gets a new arm to replace the one he sacrificed in his showdown with Lord Conquer (whee!) Someday I'll have to search out an unedited, original language release.

Hopefully my DVD store guy was on the right track and "The Duel" will be just as good.

Yesterday we drove out to the King of Prussia Mall (just west of Philly) for the Pokemon Journey Across America mall tour! For the non-fans out there, the mall tour is a regular goodwill event, where Nintendo gives out free poke-junk and solicits people to compete for slots in a national Pokemon video game tournament. This tour also celebrates Pokemon's 10th Anniversary.

This year, the key event is the free download of certain types of Pokemon into your cartridges, Celebi being the super-rare one. You can also select any two from a list of twenty, the "Top 20" chosen from an online poll.

We didn't know what to expect, in terms of attendance. Turns out, it was a freaking zoo. But it's cool to see hard, irrefutable evidence that the "fad" is far from over. Pokemon still rocks.

The above picture is the end of the Celebi line when we got there. In the dead center of the photo, you can just make out some flatscreens showing a Pokemon video. That is more or less the head of the line. Once you get there, you hand over your GBA and games to some semi-surly temp staff, who plug you into some great amazing Celebi server (actually just another GBA) and magically force the creature into your game. I received a level 70 Celebi for my Sapphire and my LeafGreen! Whoo!

It's really not that big a deal, except that there's no other way to get a Celebi, unless you have a cheater box. In fact, the Pokemon website makes a stink that you can't receive any of these downloads if your cartridge has been "altered" in some way by such devices. I would have liked to see that tested... because I saw a ton of kids there, and I highly doubt they all had un-cheated Pokemon games. No way.

So bit of a wait there, maybe 40 minutes? I forget. But this wasn't even the long line. The Top 20 line actually twisted outside of the mall. I'm italicizing that so you get how awful that is. That one had to be a 90 minute wait, so we passed. Besides the Top 20 list includes mostly pokemon that you can find in the games anyway (like Pikachu, for crying out loud), which makes me wonder who voted. Kids who don't even own the game?

Meeting Munchlax was a high point for Clark. As soon as he saw the costumed characters, he started pointing and getting all excited. Notice that I tried my damnedest to NOT go super-geek and wear one of my Nintendo-themed t-shirts. (Had I remembered I had it, I probably would have worn my Camp Hyrule 2005 Champion t-shirt. Cabin 9 forever!)

I'm a sucker for big props. Here's Ruby/Sapphire starters Mudkip, Torchic and Treeko. The best part is the Pikachu-brand stanchioning. "Stay the hell back kids! Pika pika!"

You know, I am all for cosplay. Which right away puts me in a noble minority. But this was not cool at all. I was coincidentally lining up a shot of the mess at the epicenter of all the lines, which a big fat dude dressed up like Jessie ambled into the picture. Jessie. The female member of Team Rocket.

I award big points for chutzpah. But I must take away points for showing up alone, gross, and in drag. I've seen some scary stuff at Origins, but this takes the cake and hits it with a semi.

When you're into cosplay, it's not just about getting a costume. You have to have some awareness of your body type or you risk looking like a big fat idiot. Just because you have the passion doesn't mean you should start sewing together the spandex.

Had this guy put together a Snorlax costume, he would have been the belle of the ball. Instead, he just had parents shying their kids away from him for the day. Keep your neuroses private, man. At home, be Jessie. Own Jessie. Do the chant. In public? Try not to look like a sex offender.

But on to stuff your eyeballs might actually want to see: me, Clark and Pikachu. I've already decided this will be Clark's first memory.

Not only were the lines to get FREE stuff atrocious... there was also a painful wait to BUY stuff. I don't know if this is the usual decision, but the Official Merchandise was stashed in a single 3'x6' kiosk, with an hour wait circling it like a funnel cloud. Couldn't we have tagged another kiosk somewhere for this? Were we not expecting the massive turnout?

I will say this: everybody we saw who waited and bought stuff... bought a ton of said stuff. At least $60 worth. If you wait long enough, you must have to buy more to compensate. We skipped this line as well. Everything at the kiosk looked like junk I've seen at the online store anyway.

Here's the Top 20 download station, the enormo-line we avoided. No doubt the reason why this line was so offensively long was because you have kids up there going through extreme mental torment trying to decide which two pokemon they want. Entei and Zapdos? No... Alakazam and Espeon? No... Absol and Tyranitar? What a freaking nightmare.

The only other thing we did (aside from grabbing a free goodie bag with a Pikachu promo card) is get official Trainer Certificates for me and Clark. The certificates state that you are an official Trainer, as of your tenth birthday. Which is accurate... in the world of Pokemon, kids are allowed to elect to become Trainers when they turn ten. And roam the continent unchaperoned. So Clark's certificate gives him that right in the year 2015, while mine says I've been legit since 1984.

This sign shows four pokemon that are so astonishingly powerful, that you couldn't use them in the tournament. I was not entered in the tourney, but I believe it was set up so that you would plug your GBA (with your chosen team of hand-trained combatants) into a GameCube for a one-on-one match with your opponent. I would have liked to watch some of that, but it was such a disaster area that it was no fun to try to hover around ground zero. I don't know if other stops on the tour were better organized, but the King of Prussia mall really isn't well suited for this kind of thing. Not enough central space; it's too hallway-centric.

A grand time, all in all. Especially when you looked around and saw GBAs and DSs every five feet. I should have busted out the Lite and went looking for random games to join.

Getting the Celebi download sparked my interest in playing Pokemon again, but that will be a future entry!

We went to Dutch Wonderland today, which, up until a few years ago, was noted chiefly for being a really crappy local amusement park. The big turnaround came when the ailing park was bought by somebody much bigger and mutated into a higher-rent version of its former self. Which is actually kind of nice. The downside being that the new owners also saw fit to install those awful pay-to-lose carny games every five feet, which dampens the "family friendly" vibe that the park's marketing dangles in front of your nose.

There is still plenty of remaining kitsch value; the new owners haven't completely renovated the place. It's still called "Dutch Wonderland," in a historically misguided attempt to marry the Disney World concept to Amish Country. And plenty of buildings and props are still there that I remember dotting the landscape 15+ years ago. I was struck by how tall the trees had gotten, since when I was there last it was largely an empty flat field, but there's time for you. It's still a small, low-impact amusement park with a severe case of Theme Creep (the property simply can't decide if it wants to be themed to medieval times, pioneer days, outer space, Mother Goose stories or quaint Amish farmland).

So today it became Clark's First Amusement Park, to his later shame.

The park was briefed in the first edition of the wonderful Roadside America book thusly:

"[The] Dutch Wonderland amusement park, built in 1963 ... is encircled by a sluggish old-fashioned monorail. The loop ride features a scenic trip to the parking lot to check on your car. The vast gift shop offers smutty Amish souvenirs and endless novelties exploting the imprudently named nearby town of Intercourse, PA."

That was written in 1986, deep in the park's near-death period. The gift ship, while still trafficking in ridiculous Amish paraphrenalia, has drastically cut down on the Spencers Gifts style junk. (We did find some funny-sad fake road signs.) But the monorail ride still wends its way out to the parking lot, which I do find hilarious. The Roadside America website today claims that this may be the last theme park monorail still in operation, Disney not included. It does not discuss how the monorail is little more than a slow-moving mobile sauna, offering guests the chance to sweat off a couple pounds while checking on their minivans.

But on to the Firsts!

First Water Park
Obviously a newish addition to DW, it nevertheless follows the park's form of being cramped and off-theme. In order to give the park some merchandisable characters, Duke the Dragon was introduced several years back (along with a Princess and a tertiary Knight character). This is the medieval theme at work, yet Duke's Lagoon is mostly a cookie-cutter Crazy Water Pipes kind of place, with random sea animals providing additional water spout points.

Not that Clark cared. These are the sort of things I notice.

First Time Running Around Shirtless Among About a Million People
His favorite part of the water park was those intermittant spray streams that come up out of the pavement. Although the funny part was that, as soon as the spray stopped, he would leave and head off to something else, rather than sticking around to watch it turn on again a few seconds later.

First Time Applauding a Diving Show
I seem to recall DW having actual dolphins once upon a time. Now the aqua-amphitheatre is home to a fancy diving show, telling the story of a Frog Prince competition.

First Theme Park Ride
It's one of those slow bulldozer kiddie rides, probably called "Duke's Dozers" or something, in another display of non-sequiter theming. His partner there is our pal Karissa, who was willing to guide Clark through the process even though she knew this was a drag of a ride.

First Carousel
Or is this a merry-go-round? I can never keep that straight, simply because I don't care enough to.

This was good fun, although it was difficult to get him to look towards me, since the interior of the ride is so resplendent with mirrors and twinkly bits.

First Time Fake-Steering a Fake-Jungle Cruise Ride into a Real Parking Lot
This is Dutch Wonderland's other ride that takes you out into the parking lot, the Dragon's Lair. You even get to visit Route 30 so you can figure out where you're going to stop for dinner later.

I love this one, because it is easily the worst ride ever. You pile into a boat shaped liked a giant log, and it takes you on a long zig-zag through a pond with absolutely nothing in it. Seriously. There may have been a hippo in there somewhere, but it is long gone. You're pretty much just watching the cars at the nearby traffic light, until you pull alongside a giant cave/mountain scene with an odd dragon head erupting from the top. The dragon is, oddly, a scary dragon... but it has been painted in the friendly purple of mascot Duke. Then you see a same-colored egg - implying that Duke is female? - and you turn a corner where some poor high school student asks if she can take your picture, and you're docked.

But there are layers to this one that enhance the experience, and that only a longtime Dutch Wonderland fan would know. See, this ride used to called Fred Flintstone's Cave Cruise. Or something like that... I'm definite on the Fred Flintstone usage, but I suspect there was something punny or even more alliterative on the second part. Anyway, the "dragon" used to be a genuinely scary tyrannosaurus (or, as scary as you could get at DW), which explains why this "Duke" is so realistically styled with angry eyes and big pointy teeth. And there were fiberglas Flintstone-esque cave people positioned on the mountain set, because the whole effect was supposed to be prehistoric. Which also explains the log-shaped boats.

I don't know for sure when Fred left the show. Probably when somebody from Turner came up from Atlanta to visit relatives.

It is a truly terrible ride, and one that every DW visitor has to do, even if they don't get it on the ironically hilarious level.

First Time Touching Popeye
But whoever owns Popeye needs to get up there, pronto. This... homage? sits along a desolate riverside walking path, just south of the famous Hobo Shack (I'm serious; there's a sign). This is one of many bizarre old structures that made no sense to me in the '80s and continue to confound guests twenty years later. If you keep on the path - and you will - you'll also come across a fascinatingly random pirate figure, whom I contend is one of the old Flintstone-era cavemen statues repainted with an eyepatch.

Clark was actually really into those dopey statues, going "Ooooh! Ooooh!" while I could only think "This is weblog gold!"

The capper to the whole experience is the giant garden on the north end of the park. Built on an island and surrounded by TWO slow-as-molasses boat tours, this is a quiet, almost abandoned section that nobody ever bothers to visit because there's nothing there. Just trees and flowerbeds and - in the grand Dutch Wonderland tradition - a couple of forlorn old masterworks of hand-crafted fiberglas, this time showcasing portions of rides that no longer exist. There's a train, a swan boat, and a whale car, and corresponding plaques have the nerve to talk about these items in reverent, storied paragraphs. The whale ride was shut down in 1965, but a single car lives on to warn future rides of their tenuous place in the annals of theme park history.

Hope you also had a Dutch Wonderful day.

Last time I discussed Kingdom Hearts 2, I had revealed the quasi-embarrassing truth that I had spent about six hours just tooling around in the Gummi Ship levels and editor. I think I put in another couple hours on top of that. It actually got to the point that I forgot what the actual game was, because I was so into the space shooter segments. Since the editor is actually easy to use this time, you have more of a reason to re-play the shooter courses to completion, since you win all kinds of crazy new Gummi pieces for shipbuilding.

I did get some upgrades that enabled me to work up a nicer version of the Air Pirate wingman ship. It is very impressive, for an old TaleSpin geek.

Eventually, I realized that I would have to go back and play more worlds, if only to open up new Gummi Ship routes. So, off to Port Royal!

The inclusion of a Pirates of the Caribbean world is even odder than having Nightmare Before Christmas show up in the first one. NBC is in no way a major Disney property; it's not considered part of the "classic" Disney features. And here in America, it wasn't even a big box office winner. Somehow, in Japan, the movie never dropped off the radar, and Japan-made NBC merchandising has kept the film alive (which probably has to do with Japanese culture being much more accepting of cute-ified horror than we are... particularly in the kids arena.)

So anyway, seeing Nightmare getting ranked as highly as Hercules or Winnie-the-Pooh or Little Mermaid was a shock for the American audience. Same deal for Pirates. But, whereas NBC was included as a response to the film's cult popularity in Japan, Pirates is included purely because the timing is fortituous with a film sequel this summer. Could be worse; had KH2 come out in 2005, we might have gotten a Herbie world.

Donald and Goofy seem similarly surprised by the Pirates world, as they make several "Boy, is this world strange" comments. The real question is, does the world work... because it could definitely be stupid to jump into a "real" world after spending so much time in "animated" worlds. The characters here (Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, etc) are obviously more realistically designed than most, but the effect is not as off-putting as I had anticipated. You just have to visually get past the notion that, suddenly, Donald Duck is talking to Johnny Depp. (Although it's not Depp's voice, just an impersonator doing his addled, cocksure shtick.)

Agrabah and Halloween Town return from the original, and it's more of Sora jumping in and vowing to beat all challenges within fifty miles. I just don't get what the game thinks is going on with the plot. Because I'm seeing nothing. Sora keeps asking about Riku, but he jumps from world to world with absolutely no clues to lead him. It's random and pointless. It just makes me want to spend more time in the Gummi Ship.

Agrabah is unfortunately almost a carbon copy of the first adventure in Aladdin's world, now with new cutscenes and an obvious lack of Jafar. At the end of the world, you get the Genie summon, which brings my summon total to TWO after twenty hours of play. That's pretty annoying. To make matters worse, the Genie summon kinda sucks.

Halloween Town at least covers a portion of the movie not found in the first Kingdom Hearts: the Christmas Town section. So at the very least, there's some different visuals here, which is nicer than the overly blacked darkness in the first game's Halloween Town.

Some stupid character moments: Sora becomes obsessed with saving Santa Claus, implying that the Santa legend is present in his homeworld. Which just seems to prove that, really, there isn't much at stake here if Sora has the kind of time to get distracted by thoughts of owning lots of free toys. And back in Agrabah, Donald is shown to be super-greedy. Since when is pure greediness part of Donald Duck's character? That's Daffy Duck... or at minimum, Scrooge McDuck, who is seen hanging out in Hollow Bastion trying to start an ice cream stand. Donald is easily angered and frustrated... not especially greedy. Scrooge pays him 20 cents a day!

All of which, by the way, has no bearing on how much fun it is to smack Heartless around at every corner. One great thing about Kingdom Hearts is that the game does not cheap out on baddies. Every world has exclusive types that fit in with the overall theme. Aside from a couple of low level generic baddies, there's always something new and bizarre to look at.

And then there's Atlantica, the Little Mermaid world. I always thought it was weird that Ariel didn't count as one of the seven Princesses in the KH1, and the blacklisting continues here. Atlantica doesn't even have any bad guys on it. It's just a world of rhythm games. And not particularly challenging rhythm games either. It's a happy diversion, especially if you're interested in hearing the original singing voice of the Little Mermaid do some different takes on the movie's classic songs.

Sora, however, will never be able to live down all the singing and dancing he does in this world.

I have only played this game twice. And not even at home. And not really me.

You see, we've been going to an adoptive families party for the last two years, and we volunteer to bring a PS2 as one of the kids game stations. (WTF? Ninty is 4 teh kiddies!?!/111?!?!1) So far, the top games to set up are the Harry Potter EyeToy stuff and this version of DDR, because it also uses the EyeToy for a bunch of silly minigames.

There's nothing quite like having ten kids all jumping on a dance pad while they watch themselves shaking virtual coconuts off a tree. It's a riot.

Adding the EyeToy stuff to DDR is the biggest addition I've seen in years of DDR games. Unfortunately, at its peak, DDR turned into the Bemani Madden... yearly releases with new songs and not much else. This title was a nice upgrade. Extreme, even.

Memory Score: Everybody always likes the game where you have to feed animals.

I always preferred the understated, classy Sly Cooper to the brash, overt Ratchet and Clank. Smooth, sneaky moves. Innovative boss fights. Well-placed sidebar games. Beautiful, distinct art direction. The Sly sequel tried its damnedest to disabuse me of that notion.

Here's the problem: the secondary characters suck. Sly himself is one of the most fun and best controlling characters in recent memory, and this game continually thinks it would be fun to have you NOT play as him. It is unreasonable punishment to stick the players inside all of these lush environments and then have them play the inelegant, cliched sidekicks.

It was just this reason that put me off of the threequel, which I still haven't picked up. These are great games; but somewhere along the development train, somebody made a decision to offer less Sly. Regrettable.

Memory Score: Lose the band

I first heard of Katamari Damacy in one of the trade mags, either OPM or EGM. There was a single screenshot and a vague description about a game mechanic involving rolling a ball. I was hooked. Figuring the game to be a low-release niche title, I pre-ordered it at EB... and had to spell it ("with a K") to help the clerk find it in their system.

No one knew about this game.

And for about six weeks, lots of us were afraid it would remain that way. Those of us who were there on day one and already very much in love, well, we took to the forums and told all of our friends about it. Every early Katamari owner out there worked to sell this game to all the innocent babes who had never heard of it.

In short order, Katamari Damacy become a worldwide gaming phenomonon.

This is proof that word of mouth works, even in an industry dominated by heavy marketing and me-too! gameplay. This is proof that great gameplay rises to the top, that small, clever designs can be just as well received as massive million-dollar productions, and that "quirky" doesn't have to mean "crappy." This is proof that video gaming is as inclusive and accessible as we want to make it, and that the hard lines dividing sex and age demographics are an illusion. Katamari Damacy is a victory for gaming and for gamers.

Memory Score: Easily the top brand-new property for this generation, on any system.

Next time: A great demo brings me back to a horror franchise, high hopes set me up for a crappy music sequel, and the PS2's biggest name wastes all of its early press talking about how you can make your character fat.

Some final thoughts on Origins 2006, the year that was.

There was weirdness: no Wizards booth. Not that you need to demo Magic, but it surprised me that they didn't even bother with a booth for all of the other games. I don't think it's a healthy sign that the industry's leader has abandoned this con, even if they don't have the unabashed success they once did.

Also: no Upper Deck booth, meaning nowhere to demo Marvel/DC Vs. and nobody for me to beg for a comprehensive online rulebook. Doubly strange, that.

Here's a brutal runthrough of the major games we experienced at this year's show...

Doomtown: The usual tournament organizer was unavoidably detained, so I'm glad Mike and I opted out of the Championship Friday night (after experiencing the no-show on Thursday.) The guy did get in touch with some people at the con who managed to pull together a 12-player event, but without that one dude, I sort of fear for how any ruling conflicts were resolved. The guy who won this year's ad hoc tourney has cheated against me and others in previous events, so that pretty much confirms my suspicions. There's a very good chance that Mike and I won't bother searching this event out in the future, even though we both still love the game. I think that by the time you hit 12 participants, it's time to retire the banner.

Clout Fantasy: Speaking of inalienable truths of the gaming business, here's another: When you start giving away full retail starter sets of your collectible game in the convention freebie bag, your game is dead. I can't name a single game I've received as swag (or demoed, come to think of it) that went on to rousing success after handing out $10 stock for free. Clout Fantasy is just the latest name on that long, sad list.

It's one thing to give out a single free promo card or cheapie poster/playmat... but a complete starter set? You're sunk, meladdo. Even handing out free $3 booster packs is pretty much a coughing canary.

Did I mention how obnoxious this game is? It's all your least favorite bits of a miniatures game - the measuring, the fun-sucking interactions triggered by a dictionary of non-descript keywords, and oh god the measuring - compounded by decidedly boring visuals (same-old same-old fantasy artwork stuffed onto a poker chip) and a stupid deployment system (you throw them. So until you get good at throwing stuff, you might as well roll a random number and place your chips on the damn floor.) I guess the act of throwing poker chips is so inherently fun that these guys thought they could make another cookie cutter fantasy game out of it. This whole game is based on that one conceit, and it shows.

Looney Labs: Getting very stingy with the promo cards, these guys are. This year, they were giving out free Forest Goals for Fluxx... but to get any of the three Tree cards that match it, you had to win a demo game against them. Now, obviously the demo guys are going to play it so they always lose, but generally you're in a game demo with two to three other people. Sometimes people you know, sometimes not. So now only one of us gets the free extra card? Weak.

My guess is that they will sell sets of these promos in their online store at some future point (they usually do), so I'm not too bugged about it.

Still, the Looneys seem to be struggling lately, to my view at least. The second Chrononauts (the one I helped with!) has not been the seller they had expected, especially given the huge footprint they established with the first one. Fluxx is their only bona fide hit, and they're milking it like crazy with Eco-Fluxx and Family Fluxx and - coming soon - Christian and Jewish Fluxx (which is probably just a calculated response to their subversive Stoner Fluxx edition.) Not a bad idea. Look at how Cranium has turned itself into a whole family game franchise. Not to mention all the myriad versions of Uno, Monopoly, etc. Although, when they announce Elizabethtown College Fluxx, that's probably when I'm out for good.

Icehouse has always been a tough sell; $8 for one color set of pyramids when you probably need around four to actually play a decent game? The pricy boxed sets (for IceTowers and Zendo) didn't help. Downgrading Icehouse into a simple multiplayer game (Treehouse) that only requires a single set of pyramids is a step in the right direction. I have this image of a warehouse full of pyramids that they're desperate to move. I'm just not sure that the Treehouse game is the gas that's going to do it.

And don't even ask me about Nanofictionary, which is one of those "imaginative" party games where players' opinions determine the winner. I find those extremely distasteful. Until Looney Labs comes up with another game on par with the simple-yet-compelling Fluxx or the complex-yet-intriguing Chrononauts, I'm giving their library a 50-50.

Gloom: I've had this one for a while, but Mike picked up his own set from one of the many nameless vendor booths. Good game, once you get past the confusing application of active card text.

I recently bought the expansion set, which seems to have arrived on a different plastic stock than the initial edition. The expansion also has nicely opaque black dots on the card backs, whereas the original is unfortunately see-through. I wonder if they re-did the first set to address some of the physical clumsiness of those cards? I'll have to ask Mike what his looks like.

All Wound Up: This is a novel idea, but there's a reason it hasn't been done before. Wind-up toys just are not a reliable mechanic. In the demo, Chris's li'l zombie fell over as soon as he put it on the board, and the demo guy said "Whoops! That's legal! Has to stay where he fell! Guess your zombie was a little tipsy!" At that point, I think I'd rather have non-mobile zombie figures and just move them on the game board Candyland-style.

And there's this whole weird pre-round card distribution method that just boggles my mind. Everybody gets 10 cards. Then everybody passes 5 cards to the right. Then everybody passes 4 cards to the right. Then everybody passes 3 cards to the right. Then everybody passes 2 cards to the right. Then everybody passes 1 card to the right. I'm not even kidding. By the end of that, you're physically winded. Maybe that's what they mean by "All Wound Up." Only then do you attempt to move your zombie dudes, but even that is governed by a bidding system! It's like everything I don't like in one game. I just can't imagine this was the only way to effectively and fairly move wind-up zombie toys across a game board.

Zombies Second Edition: If this came in an even bigger box, I would have definitely bought it. Isn't that awful? I love the female zombie figures, and I'm sure they cleaned up some of the old card wordings... but I want the box to be able to old all four mini-expansions AND the 4th set with the zombie dogs. I guess they're going to have to do a Crate Edition to get me.

HorrorClix: we avoided all the Clix games because we don't especially like them. But we did get a free 2-figure demo set inside our goodie bag, so I did spend some time reading the rules while on the toilet. And I wish I had taken such an informative dump while I was still at the con, because I might actually have asked Mike to try this one out with me. The rules as presented in the demo are much more manageable that any other Clix game I've tried. Shame I could care less about the dorky horror theme.

I think that with each Clix release, WizKids inches closer and closer to making a Clix game I might actually like. Mage Knight: boring fantasy world, ugly figure paint, movement/range issues and a bank of indecipherable abilities all keyed by color. HeroClix: cool comic characters, better figure paint, movement simplified to a grid system, but still with the colors. HorrorClix: boring horror world, better figure paint, grid still in place, and now the color abilities are explained on handy reference cards that come with each character. Mash up a little Hero and Horror, and they might finally grab me.

Fullmetal Alchemist TCG: I like the anime (actually, I like the manga, but they're more or less one-and-the-same) but not enough to buy into the card game. Because - as has been the downfall of many a card game before it - it's just another featureless system that never really feels like Fullmetal Alchemist. It could be applied to any other license out there and be just as serviceable. I mean, the game's goal is to be the last man standing at various randomized locations so as to gather points. What's so Fullmetal about that?

The only mechanic that has a direct line to the property is the Equivalent Exchange function, which lets you dump cards in hand to pay for a card cost that you would not normally be able to afford.

I guess you're supposed to love the IP so much, that it doesn't matter what you're doing with it. See also: Case Closed, InuYasha, Marvel/DC Vs. and Lord of the Rings. And if you're interested in a list of games that I feel do a workable job of making you feel like you're inside the particular world of the license: Pokemon, Zatch Bell, Soul Calibur/Street Fighter, 7th Sea, Doomtown and Middle Earth. That's just off the top of my head.

Villainy: Great artwork, as I probably already mentioned. So many small-company games just half-ass their way through the graphic design stage. Hell, lots of big-company games have ugly, unreadable card templates and amateur artwork. So it is always nice to run across a game that is just plain nice to look at. And that, in fact, was what made me want to try out this game.

They sell three different decks, each built around a general supervillainous archetype. This initial run features a mad scientist, a gorilla mastermind, and a supernatural goth girl. The objective is to kill off everyone else, which you do by way of your many minions, your expandable secret base, and various special ability cards. The coolest feature is a giant monster (unique to each villain) that you have to gradually build out of four cards.

The game needs an online FAQ, though, because there are plenty of card interactions that are not easily explained by the included rulesheet. We played a three-man game that dragged on for over two hours... and the box quotes an average play time of 20 minutes.

Pirates: Our games looked amazing - thanks to the sculpted islands and full-on ocean playmat - but Chris and I had some pretty epic arguments about it. Right away, Chris wanted to do away with how the game determines range for each cannon. Which, of course, drove me nuts. He proposed simplifying it so that: if the center of a ship was within range to the center of another ship, then ALL cannons get an attack. Not just the cannons that would normally be considered within range. We played this way, which meant that we were giving the big ships an advantage, since they would always get to fire their full complement of guns regardless of where the target sat. Me, I'd just rather play the damn games as intended.

Which is exactly why Mike hates these sorts of games, because it always comes down a bunch of squabbling about whether Ship A is within range or not. I'll agree entirely; it's the pure asthetics of little pirates ships maneuvering around ecah other that keeps me coming back. It would be great if there was a definite, un-arguable method for calculating the range and moving ships across the field... but that's just not how Pirates is designed. I don't care how good of friends you are, when the crux of the game relies on defining imaginary boundaries, you're going to bruise some egos.

And no, I did not spend the $50 on overpriced Pirates boosters just so I could get the awesome 10-mast convention exclusive ship. WizKids, you really suck. Good thing we'll always have eBay, where some happy gamers are already offloading the "exclusive," which they probably stole off a loading dock three weeks ago.

This was a pretty big deal, getting a Resident Evil game on a Nintendo system, even if it was a fancy dancy remake. Plus, Nintendo got to fightin' with a little M-rated cred.

It did look great, but then, it damn well better... it's pre-rendered backgrounds. Unfortunately, by 2002, the world was pretty much bone-weary of the weird old RE tank control scheme. And, although the first Resident Evil is a museum-quality classic, it ain't because of the high-end plot. So combine a very familiar (albeit remixed) premise with Clinton-era controls, and you don't end up with a title that moves GameCubes.

I stopped playing when I got to the first Lisa fight... because you can't kill her, as I later found out online. Which ticked me off after spending hours trying to shotgun the monster down.

Memory Score: I probably didn't give this one a fair shake.

This is the GameCube's Ico.

It's a great game, in a style all but un-represented on the console, with plenty of good buzz... and nobody bought it. The only difference between Ico's Q-rating and Eternal Darkness's Q-rating is that people actually continue to talk about Ico.

Eternal Darkness is a huge Lovecraftian ripoff%D homage with some exceptionally twisted gameplay. Although you start out thinking you're in for some kind of Tomb Raider Plus Melodrama (with the game's main character Alexandra Roivas), you're quickly sent back in time to control a Roman commander as he ventures into an ancient tomb in search of a trip of incredibly powerful artifacts. The game then follows a dozen characters throughout time, all somehow linked to these mysterious talismans.

And even though there's a great balance of physical attacks and magickal spells, the game's true speciality is the insanity system. Whenever you (in whatever character you're currently playing) sees a monster (typically zombie-type stuff), your sanity meter drops... and when that falls too far, the game starts screwing with you. Your character's head will pop off, the game will drop all audio, everything will turn upside down, you'll get a warning about the GameCube controller being unplugged, even the Windows Blue Screen of Death. It's an amazing experience that keeps you constantly engaged.

This game got it all right - story, characters, action, depth, replay, graphics - and nobody cared.

Memory Score: As soon as this masterpiece topped out at fifteen copies sold nationwide, we knew the Cube was never going to attract any more M-rated exclusives.

I had never played a Tony Hawk game, but I sort of wanted to try one out. So when I heard about Aggressive Inline I jumped that up to the top of the list, since I do in fact roller blade in real life.

As promised, this is the inline version of Tony Hawk. You skate around big interactive environments chaining tricks and whipping around like crazy. If I remember correctly, this was the first game in this genre to add a performance-based skill upgrade system... meaning that, if you wanted to be a better grinder, you just had to do more grind moves.

I never got good enough to unlock everything, but I did get good enough to have fun with it.

Memory Score: An early contender in this generation's vaunted "breast physics" fight.

Next time: To the beach! First we'll meet up with the girls, then strap on our water packs, and take a ferry ride with a rhyming turtle-man.

[LIVE ON THE ROAD from Origins 2006] In one corner, they were running seminars on foam weapon combat. This is not one of America's finest moments.

Speaking of general skeeviness, Mike and I bailed on the Doomtown tourney. By day's end, we were just kinda not that into it. And since the event organizer was absent the day before, we figured there was a real chance that we'd stick around until 7pm and get left at the altar a second time. Plus, our man Chris showed up for the con, and he was not playing Doomtown, so that would leave him abandoned for 5+ hours. So, no tears were shed. Maybe next year.

So what played us out today? More demos.

Here's Chris displaying the proper way to wind up little walking zombies, as used in the cutsey undead racing game, All Wound Up. Chris liked it, I didn't, no purchase.

Demoed the Fullmetal Alchemist TCG. Chris not so much, me okay, no purchase. It doesn't have enough of a hook for me to want to invest into it. While we were doing Fullmetal, Mike took off for an Othello match, but nobody else showed up, so he came right back.

They demoed some more Out of the Box games, and Chris bought some kind of letter guessing game. I usually find their stuff far too abstract, so the Out booth is never really a priority for me.

I really wanted to do a Villainy demo, since the artwork is super nice. A bunch of stoner teens were clogging the stand, but I waited them out and thought it was good enough to buy. So there's one of this year's Surprise Finds. Plus, the demo guy recognized my Ambush Bug t-shirt.

This dice game shown here was absurdly awful. Pure dice games in general tend to drag on me, and this one fluffs it up by having ugly character cards for everyone to look at.

I did the new Looney Labs game that is culled from the expensive wreckage of their Icehouse system. Kind of a Fluxx meets Zendo sort of thing. Didn't do much for me; I thought the various actions were too tough to interpret and apply.

And as usual, lots more free junk. Posters, pencils, pens, cards, boxes.

Here's a Pirates match in progress. Chris and I played three games of it tonight, since Mike sort of hates the game. Sure does look nice with the ocean playmat and sculpted islands, eh? Freaking hell.

We ended the night with a massive 60-point fleet game that went on for hours, largely due to my avoidance strategy. Chris had this giant ship with great cannons and crew, and I saw no need to risk coming in close to her. So I kept zipping around and transferring treasure until I managed to slip a winning amount of gold in under the wire. Fun stuff.

We also played a three man Monsters Menace America game, but we're a little concerned with the endgame... it seems too unlikely that one player could ever kill off two (or more) enemy monsters (unless the opponents both ended the game with really crappy life totals.) So more testing is needed.

We're still not 100% on tomorrow's agenda. We've done almost everything we really wanted to do. If we stop in tomorrow, it would just be more wandering and more on-site gaming. So we'll see. Could be the shortest Origins ever.