I played a bit of Sword of Mana yesterday, in between funeral proceedings on my Micro. I was surprised; I was told that Sword would suck a lot. Maybe I’m a bigger sucker for the Mana style than I thought, but after an hour and a half of play, I still want to keep going.

It’s like a tighter Seiken Densetsu 3 with two characters to choose from. The NPC AI is still retarded, and some things are really clunky, like jumping, but it’s been fun so far. The AI is at least amusing, since I’m playing the girl, and the guy resembles a certain 8-bit character who appreciates fine cutlery.

Compared to other GBA action-RPGs, it looks pretty good. The combat is not quite on the level of Shining Soul II, but at least as good as CIMA. Note that I’m comparing three fairly awkward games. You want to swing a sword and knock stuff back? Go play Minish Cap. At least SoM has better fighting than in the source material, Final Fantasy Adventure, which plays kind of like a gimped Zelda game.

Dang, I love messing with the design. The fact that I have no knowledge or experience makes it fun and interesting. RIGHT.

Anyway, things are all messed up because I wanted to widen things a little, give the margins a little room, let everything breathe… so, I made a new banner, which is the wrong size now, and has the wrong kind of border, I messed with the colors a little, and now they look all wrong. And the text is really unreadable. But it’s okay, since I’m going to go looking for a better picture (with my camera) tomorrow, since it should be nice and rainy.

Apologies for a weird page in the meantime.

Update: Couldn’t get any cool pictures today. A disturbingly unclassy yet charming banner is now in place.

UPDART: hahaha, check it out now. It’s going to be like this for a bit.

Nintendo is sneaky. God forbid they actually do something when they’re rumored to.

Screens are better, but the same size. Check. Unit is smaller and shinier. Check.

I like the new Micro-style D-pads better than the SP/DS-style flat ones, even though I never really had any problems with those. I thought I would, but I didn’t. KoF EX2 proved that they were just fine.

The slick design dosen’t really invite stickers. Will it come in colors? I have to redo my friend lists if I use another DS, right? Why move Start and Select? (furthermore, why not put them on either side of the screen?)

Will Nintendo quietly upgrade the screens on the current DS, like they did with the uber-SPs when the Micro came out? Because I think I would rather have a really good silver DS again. Also, I still have the green panels from my destroyed DS that I can fit onto another DS. The paint needs some touching up, but I’ve been itching to do something with them.

Official tanuki opinion: It dosen’t look as cool as the classic DS, but it’s more functional and lighter.

I’ll probably get one at release, the price is right. If I’m feeling really good, maybe I’ll import one. But Nintendo has been really good lately about very close US and Japan release dates, making that unnecessary.

Hello and welcome to the first (and maybe only) Paragraph of the Month award!

Okay, so it’s not really a monthly award. I just thought of it and decided to post about it. I’ll keep posting awesome paragraphs if I find them though. Or sentences or phrases or clauses or words or whatever.

Anyway, this goes to tim rogers, posting on insert credit. Here it is, completely free of pesky context:

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I freak out a little in my head every time I see a metroid. The reflex comes from their silent way of flying through the air, and that little screech they make before an attack. The fangs are scary too. But they’re also kinda cute, just little mindless biological weapons that seem like they could have been decent creatures given the chance. Central to the series, but never a main character. Pawns.

I beat Metroid Prime today. Final score: 76%, 20 hours and 7 minutes! I enjoyed myself for most of that time, except when I was uttering a long string of obsceneties during or after a boss fight.

The game is really terrific. I was never lost despite the really huge map, everything was pretty to look at, and there were lots of nice little touches that were sprinkled about, like the Chozo and the pirates talking about Samus. It was everything that a Metroid game should be, and being in 3-D actually made it better. It was mysterious and exciting.

I won’t play it again. The Hard Mode looks tempting, but I just know that it would kick my ass. I let the game envelop me for a couple weeks so that I could let it go at the end. Metroids themselves are really loathesome buggers, but they’re oddly cute at the same time. I think the ending of Metroid II made me think of them this way. They’re annoying, but not quite deadly in small numbers.

I’m going to play Sky Gunner some more.

I am really impressed with the US packaging for Electroplankton. Every bit of it was treated with utmost care and respect. The hand-drawn manual’s style and humor are preseved, the box has a shiny blue insert, it has background info on Iwai and Iwai’s own explanation of Electroplankton.

I waited for the US release of EP to get it because of the enthusiastic showing it got at E3. It was a long wait. (interestingly, Nanostray is just now hitting Japan as Danshaku. waiting isn’t as bad as i think it is. at least Japanese people have to wait for things sometimes too.) But, it’s here, and it’s come to us as the piece of art that it’s meant to be.

I’ve snapped a few pictures of the packaging with my elderly camera, so hit the photostream here to see them.

Oh yeah, and I also love playing it.

Hey, Blogsome is functioning again. Sweet.

I’m at work. More later.

When I become a zombie, I am going to eat Toshio Iwai’s brain first.

Seriously though. I’ve seen lots of videos featuring his musical devices. They’re awesome. I’d love to own one.

They always have a set key though, and set patterns of notes. This makes them easy to create nice music on, but the music generated is formulaic. In fact, they’re not instruments, they’re devices. Since Iwai created the device, any music made with it would be copyright to him. Of course, I doubt he would follow through with a suit against someone using his device to make music; on the contrary, Iwai seems like the kind of guy that would be just fine with that. Not that I know what he’s like or anything. I’m guessing.

Because his devices are incredibly cute and almost beg to be used, I think that he wants people to use them. They’re so freaking cool. That light pad that he uses in the above video is one thing. It dosen’t need to have ripple effects, bouncy balls and lightly glowing spots, but it has them, and that’s part of what makes it so cool. I dunno if his devices have ever been marketed as toys (excluding Electroplankton for the moment), but I’d think that they’d be a bit too expensive to produce.

I saw another video, way back when EP was being released in Japan, of his many other devices. Like a lens that turns light into sound, a light-controlled piano and lots of other stuff. He’s a Dr. Seuss character obsessed with sound.

So, since EP is out, what’s stopping me from owning an Iwai device of my own? Outpost freaking dot com, who took me in with a nice $25 preorder price, but has failed to ship it or even have it in stock. They suck. I’m never ordering from them again.

How many original games did you play in 2005? Ones not based on an existing series? Not remakes or updates? I didn’t play many. I noticed this several times when I was playing them. The original games that I did play though, they were excellent. And refreshing. It seems like the video game industry has the movie industry’s sequel problem a hundred times worse.

Relatedly, I sometimes think about buying a PSP, usually when I get a paycheck and before reality sets in. I played Lumines for quite a while one weekend. I think it would be kinda cool to own one. Mostly because of stuff that’s being remade. Landstalker is one huge reason for me to buy one. Genso Suikoden I&II is a smaller one. I hear that Breath of Fire III is being ported too. I dunno if those will make it to the U.S. I hope so, and with the proper lottery numbers, they would convince me to buy a PSP. There is a version of Megaman 1 in the works that will definitely make it over here, and I’m told that a Megaman X remake is on its way too. All these titles excite me, even though I’ve played them all before. They excite me because they were all really excellent games that I bonded with once upon a time, and would like to revisit, though we probably won’t bond like we used to.

If I had the foresight to make new year’s resolutions, one would be to stop buying games that I already played. (FFIV aside. FFIV deserves to be bought many times.)

When something original comes along, I notice. And this caught my eye. Look, a new Megaman game.

Okay, so it’s not totally original if it’s Megaman. But it’s a new idea at least.

It’s not Battle Network, and it’s not Zero, and it’s not X, but it might be a composite of those ideas. It’s Zex. Or ZX or something. It looks a little bit like Boktai to me. It looks promising though, that’s what I like about it. I’m currently, and probably wrongly, of the opinion that I can tell whether a game is good or not by the concept art. And by “good,” I mean good to me.

Right now, I’m looking forward to my shiny blue copy of Electroplankton arriving in the mail, along with my shiny new Sennheiser headphones.

You know how much I love They Might Be Giants, right? Maybe? Okay.

On They Might Be Giants’ last tour, they challenged themselves to write a new song for every venue they visited. Some really great, surprisingly polished songs came out of it. They’re releasing a DVD of videos made from these songs, but they’re also letting people watch the videos online at their site, with one new one showing up per week. You should go watch them. They’re awesome.

“Albany” and “Hollywood” are particularly great, but they’re all very nice. There’s even two bonus videos, including “Bastard Wants to Hit Me” from The Spine. Stop reading this now and go watch them.

CLICK IT