Overview forgames

Guilty Gear Xrd

It’s been a long while since I cared about the Guilty Gear series.  In fact, the last game I gave a hoot about was Guilty Gear X2; a game that came out 11 years ago!  I got out after that one after I realized every game was basically the same, but with minor changes.

But this series is kind of significant for me because it’s the one that got me back in to the fighting game genre.  Before that, the last fighting game I cared about was when Mortal Kombat 3 was originally released.  The first time I saw GG was when it was brought in and placed in the corner of the arcade room at my college.  No one really played it, but the attraction screen always caught my eyes;  showing off the beautiful backgrounds, hi-res and very fluid character sprites, it’s heavy metal soundtrack, and overall fast paced gameplay.

I followed BlazBlue when it originally came out because it was like a breath of fresh air for the team that originally created GG.  But I got out once they started going down that similar path where the iterations are only minor changes.

Since then, I’ve been following the genre closely.  In fact, I never noticed, but my brother pointed out my gaming collection is mainly fighting games.  Around 32% to be precise.  Yikes!

Xrd may be good a good point to reenter the franchise because I’m guessing so much has changed since X2 that it would justify getting back into it.  And like before, the pretty stage background and music caught my attention again.

What comes around

The animated gif you see above was referenced on this week’s episode of the Retronauts podcast.

The creator designed a low polygon bowl of ramen.  A style of design not seen since the  32-bit era.  I believe it was Chris Kohler from the podcast that referenced the gif and noted that this generation of gaming (PS4/XBO/WiiU) will probably start designing games with this type of style just as the previous generation (PS3/X360/Wii) used the pixel art style that mimicked 8-bit and 16-bit games.  I hope this is true because I love that kind of aesthetic.

During the 32-bit era, this was the gen where game artists were moving away from 2D designs to polygonal 3D designs.  And due to the fact that console CPU and graphics rendering were new to polygon generating, the poly counts were low. Well, based on todays standards anyways where they are now able to generate 1.6 billion polygons per second with the PS4 while the PS1 was a paltry 360,000 polygons per second.

Attention to detail were neat to checkout during the 32-bit generation.  A lot of creativity was probably poured into 3D designs because, at the time, they were freed from the shackles of expensive manufacturing costs for cartridges that included chips and boards to a simple press of a CD.  This allowed them to go wild with art aspects.  Also add that they now had a wealth of free space to deal with.  600 megabytes compared to ~8-15 megabytes for 16-bit cartridges.

Decisions and relics

I’ve had a Sega Saturn for a few years now and I love it, but back in the day I did not have one.  I had to choose one console because when you’re a kid, money is very hard to come by for buying dumb stuff like video games.  For the previous generation I had a Genesis.  I loved Sega and was glad I jumped the Nintendo boat when it came time to choose either the SNES or Genesis.  For me and my tastes in games, Sega had the better games.  My friend was a Nintendo kid so he had a SNES.  This meant I was still able to play the exclusives at his house and vice versa.  We would always have debates on which console was the superior one.  Fun times were had by all.

Then came time to move on to the next generation of consoles.  My friend would get an N64 at launch, including a few games.  It was really fun to play Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64, but then came the question: what am I going to get?  I loved Sega, so the logical choice would have been to get the Saturn, but something about the Saturn did not get my attention as much as the Genesis did.  My other friend had a Saturn and he always talked about games like Virtua Cop 2, Daytona USA, and NiGHTS.  I was at a crossroads.  I was planning to get a console for my birthday and that was rapidly approaching.  What was I to do!  I know; these are the tough choices you have to make when you’re a kid.

But then something unexpected happened.

My friend who had the N64 had an older brother who had something called a PlayStation.  While his older bro was out he took me into his room to show me the PlayStation.  We played Tekken and Revolution X and that’s when I decided that my next console was going to be PlayStation.  Looking back that was the best choice because that was the top banana of that generation for it was the most popular with the most games to choose from.

But if I were a few years older, say in my late teens or in my twenties with a larger amount of cash to spend on stuff like games, I probably would have chosen the Saturn.

While the PlayStation gave a little something for everybody and the N64 seemed to be pointed more towards a younger crowd, the Saturn seemed to be for an older group that had a core interest in gaming.  You know, a more tight-knit community always talking about the latest news for the Saturn and whatnot.  This group would have some rough times ahead when Sega decided to give the console an early death to make way for the Dreamcast.  If you were into the Saturn, it seemed you were the type to start investing in Japanese imports.

When I started to dig deep into forums about Saturn related stuff I would occasionally run into a post where someone is referencing one of two websites dedicated to Saturn.  One is Dave’s Sega Saturn Page and the other is Dustin’s Saturn page.  I would definitely see more referencing the latter.  A few years ago, Dave’s Sega Saturn Page was brought back to life, though it’s mainly a site for archival purposes.  Most of the content was written during the time the Saturn was active.  Dustin’s website, however, was a tough one to find.  It took me a while, but I was finally able to find a link that I was able to plug into the Internet Archive and something turned up!

Both of these sites are great and have a wealth of knowledge about the Saturn.  Now I know why they were such great references for back then.  I figured they might be entertaining to peruse through so here are the links for them.

Dave’s Sega Saturn page

Dustin’s Saturn page

Eretzvaju

Evil Zone is a unique fighting game.  This is a game where you have only one button for attacking.  Yeah, that’s right.  One!  In a world where we have six with most Capcom fighters and four with SNK games, you got one with Evil Zone.  It’s an interesting game, I’ll give you that, and it does have a lot of style.  It’s a game worth mentioning and I’m planning to do a write up of it some time soon.  So far I’ve completed about half of the roster and have liked what I’ve played thus far.

Pixel Perfect

While some of you schmoes are playing those “free-to-play” games on your phones that include you to pay a ton of in game purchases, I’m playing the true free to play game -- One-Dot Enemies.

A few years ago Kenji Eno (known for games such as Enemy Zero, Real Sound, and D) released a game for the iPhone called One-Dot Enemies.  The rule is simple: tap the very tiny enemies on the screen.  And man are they small!  Each enemy is one pixel in size.  It’s super hard to see them when they don’t move.  I usually confuse them with dust that’s on the screen.  When they move around they are easier to spot.

When you tap one, a colored skull is left behind for a few seconds.  Tap enough in a row without missing one and you’ll get a multi colored skull (which I’m guessing is a bonus of some sorts).  Sometimes you’ll get a big circle that moves across the screen.  Tapping it will cause an explosion of enemies to scatter from the circle; creating a sort of relief for you eyes of scanning the whole screen for an enemy.  The music is simple, but it fits the game well.

When you are done, you can go to the results screen that shows the number of enemies you’ve tapped. They are displayed inside of the circumference of a circle with another, much smaller circle within it at the center.  If you tap the button labeled [FLUSH], you will quickly notice that the circle is actually a toilet; and all of the one dot enemies will be flushed down it.  By doing this, you are submitting your total to a world total.  From my last game, the world score was 108,913,463.

Some sites note there are some Easter eggs in the game.  I haven’t found one yet, but hoping to accidentally trip over one.  I can only imagine what they can be, coming from Eno.

Give it a try; it will literally cost you nothing!

AF 2014 Results

Voting for Amnesia Fortnight 2014 has ended.  Here are the lists of games that were pitched, which ones were voted the most for round two, and finally the winners.

- Fathomless
- Astro Helmet
- Buried Metropolis
- ether
- Project 行
- Reentry
- Humans: A Study Guide
- Headlander
- Cat in a Box
- Parabolic
- Bad Golf 2
- Derelict
- GREAT SPIRITS
- Mega Rad Karate Troopers
- Eras of Adventure
- Scavengers
- Gone Astray
- The Last Missile Commander
- Breach
- Oscillate
- ExtraTerrarium
- Timagotchi
- What Could Go Wrong
- The White Witch's Gnome War
- Dum Sim
- Jet Girl and Ghost Dog

Here is the list for round two.
- Breach
- Dear Leader
- Derelict
- ether
- Eras of Adventure
- ExtraTerrarium
- Mnemonic
- Project Xing
- Steed
- What Could Go Wrong

The winners:
- Dear Leader
- Mnemonic
- Steed

Of the three games I originally picked only one made it.  But I’m glad because Mnemonic was my number one choice.  My other choices were Derelict and Reentry.  Here are the videos pitching the game ideas.

Mnemonic

Derelict

Reentry

The game picked from Pendleton Ward's list of pitched game ideas is Little Pink Best Buds.  Good to see that one was selected too.