Drum Roll! Big Announcement!

Late last week, Sony told the press that they would be making a "big announcement" today.

Speculation ran rampant, mostly fixating on the belief that it would be a much-needed price drop for the Playstation 3 (though reps for the company did deny this before the announcement).

So today came, Sony stepped up, and announced a price drop... for the Playstation 2. The forty-five (nine, actually) year old system is now $100 instead of the $130 it has been since 2006.

Ummm.... say what now? Really, Sony? That's your "big news"? Your announcement is that you're dropping the price of a console from the previous generation that just about everybody who has any interest in already owns?

Apparently, Sony was responding to pressure from third parties (well, Activision) who were threatening to cut off the PS2 is the price wasn't dropped. They also point out that demand for the PS2 is strong throughout the world, and promise support for the console with titles that appeal to families and casual gamers.

That's all well and good, but does this really qualify as a big announcement? A Playstation 3 price drop would have been a big announcement, one that people have been clamoring for. Hell, a PSP drop would have qualified, especially with Nintendo's new DSi launching in a matter of days.

One of the points that Jack Tretton, SCEA's President, made was that the price cut would boost PS3 sales down the line, as it will bring in new consumers to the Playstation brand. Here's another concept, though: if you dropped the price of the PS3 instead, you could get people to buy that console now, and then maybe it wouldn't be in third place out of three. Both the Wii and Xbox 360 are moving more machines, and Sony is trying to push their nine-year-old hardware?

I'm in no way doubting that the price drop will move systems, though analysts seem split on how much of a difference it's really going to make at this point. The PS2 still sells well (better than its successor), and it is a great option now for younger gamers. It's small, has the DVD player, and can be tossed into a playroom so the kiddies can play their Ben 10 and Spongebob Squarepants games and occasionally watch a movie when the parents want some quality alone time with their significant others.

I just think that the focus is in the wrong place, and I question the wisdom of anything that takes the focus away from the newer machine that is still playing catch-up in the marketplace.

In September 2006, at an industry conference, I sat as Sony showed us a slick video that showed off their upcoming lineup. It started with a variety of Playstation 2 games, moved onto a too marketing-like segment about the PSP, and then at the very end tossed out a few short trailers for PS3 games that had already been all over the internet for months. Again, this was September 2006, just two months before the Playstation 3 launch. You would think that the shiny new system would (and should) have been their primary focus instead of an afterthought. Now, a couple of years later, it still looks like Sony is still putting their next generation console on the back burner.

I'm sure there is some complex business decision behind this, and again I'm in no way trying to imply that the PS2 price cut is a bad thing. In fact, it's time for the aging hardware to hit the "sub $100" mark. It is the only previous generation machine still on the market, though I think that's only in part due to its popularity. Nintendo and Microsoft fans have moved onto the next generation, and their newer consoles have done well enough to warrant the retirement of their predecessors. With the PS3 still not taking off as well as it is expected to "someday", Sony needs the PS2, so at least they're selling something.

Analysts speculate that the PS2 announcement is an appetizer of sorts, that a PS3 drop will soon follow, though Sony maintains that there are no plans for such at this time.

I'll buy one eventually, mostly for the Blu-Ray player. There are a whole four games I want to play on it (Uncharted, Little Big Planet, Folklore, and Valkyria Chronicles, for those taking notes), and honestly I'm waiting for a price drop. I'm guessing that a lot of people are waiting for the console to reach a lower price point before taking the plunge, so this announcement serves as nothing other than another delay in the purchase.

Yes, Sony loses money on each console sold. They're already strapped for cash, and have made some questionable decisions as a result (like charging companies for downloadable content, the only manufacturer of the "big three" to do so), and dropping the price further and enlarging the gap between manufacturing cost and retail price probably isn't the best idea. There is a definitive risk versus reward balance going on. I'm not arguing that.

I just don't think that a thirty dollar drop on an ancient (in industry time) machine qualifies as big news at this point.

Crayola=Evil

Apparently, playing video games and coloring with crayons can cause deformities in the hands and fingers of little kids. No word yet as to what eating crayons does.

At least, that's the theory developed by a Michigan man by the name of Mike Tomich. Except for that "eating crayons" part there.

His search for answers began when his grandson and "other" young children developed bent and twisted arthritic fingers. He spent five and a half years researching, and finally believes that he has found the cause: the gripping of a video game controller. As a result of this hypothesis, he advises that children under eight not be allowed to play video games. He also states that children under five should not be allowed to use crayons for the same reasons.

According to his site, www.miketomich.com:
His study revealed hand/finger repetitive damaging dynamic forces
were present when children conducted video gaming, used a
computer mouse, and toddlers performed coloring with crayons.

"Children develop the injuries because their bones are too soft (not
calcified hard) and readily yield to the strong repeating forces."

"The permanent and accumulative damage from these forces is
silently inflicted without pain because of the numbing effects they
deliver to the soft bones."

His site is an example of visual chaos, with different statements and pictures and links scattered all over the page with nothing resembling rhyme and/ or reason. It includes "testimonials" from a couple of old ladies who state that video games are bad, there are a few pictures of doctors with no text (so they may or may not have had anything to say on the matter), and a couple of vague statements from doctors who seem to agree with the assumption. It should be noted that one doctor has the same last name as the person who started the site, so there could be a connection there.
There is one amusing link to "celebrities and their hand injuries", which is basically a series of news photos of different celebs (Oprah, Madonna, Former Prez Bush, etc) and then points out how their hands are deformed and will be arthritic and twisted in the future because of the way they've held their steering wheels. It's completely without scientific merit, and just funny as a result.

A large part of the site seems devoted to complaining about the fact that the Senate failed to pass legislation that will devote funds to a study of the issue. The bill would have earmarked 95 million dollars to the National Institute of Health and Child Development with the intention of launching a study of the affects of handling a controller and... ahem... coloring with crayons on the hands of young children.

Unfortunately (for Mr. Tomich), the bill has stalled for the past seven years, and will be submitted in 2010 for the eighth time. According to Tomich, who states that he spoke to the office of Senator Joe Lieberman, who said that Senator Mike Enzi from Wyoming was the one that killed the bill. He then assumes that the video game industry somehow "said something" to Enzi to convince him to prevent the bill's passage. While I applaud dedication to a cause, and certainly appreciate a stubborn person (*cough*my ex-wife*cough*), you would think that after seven failed attempts somebody would catch on.

Here, we have The Grumbly Gamer's own in-depth research on the issue: Crayons have been around since 1903 (thanks, Wikipedia). Millions, perhaps billions, of children under five have colored with them since then. There has been no marked epidemic of kids with twisted fingers, and if there had been I'm sure someone would have caught on in the last 106 years. Therefore, logic would dictate that there is some wrong-tree barking up happening here. Hmm, I should have asked for 95 million dollars for that. Hell, I would have done it for half price, even!

Of course, games are the culprit here, not just crayons. The holding of controllers, according to Mr. Tomich, causes serious hand issues. The facts that controllers are ergonomic, that quite a bit of research goes into their design, and that millions of little kids play games and don't have freaky claw hands seems irrelevant to the cause.

I'm in no way trying to downplay whatever has afflicted the hands of the young Tomich and "other" kids, but I'm questioning what Mike has spent the last five years doing. His site has very little by way of scientific research, and is just a mish-mash of theories and random thoughts and requests for people to contact their senators and demand that the bill see reality. Really, my site makes more sense, and that just can't be a good thing.

Just one more thing that games are getting blamed for. Getting lumped in with crayons is new, but still another assault on gaming. While I have no doubt that Mr. Tomich's heart is in the right place, as he is concerned about his grandchild, his scattershot attempt to prove gaming (and coloring) as the culprit is probably the wrong way to go.

If, however, I develop serious twisted arthritis in my hands after a lifetime of playing games, I will very painfully type out an apology.

Cutscenes- Stupidity Points

This weekend's episode of Cutscenes features a conversation about Achievements, and what some people (not me, of course. Nope. No idea what you're talking about...) will do to get more points.
Incidentally, while it is paraphrased, I've had this conversation before. Guess which side of it I was on?



Incidentally, you may have noticed that I've used the same characters again. Here is the dramatis personae in Cutscenes:

Larry the Discount Ninja: A young man who got his ninja degree through an online course. He has since decided to open up his own ninja business, offering political assasinations and espionage and other ninja services for a nominal fee.
Unfortunately, as he has based his operation in the small town of Sanderson, Minnesota, there isn't much ninja-ing to do on a daily basis. So he mostly sits around and plays video games.

Pete Peterson: Ironically, Pete is a real ninja, with a degree in advanced ninja skills from Japan's premier (and secret) Ninja University. His real name is Akira Miyamoto, and during an assassination gone awry his identity was revealed and he was hunted halfway across the world.
After some cosmetic surgery, and a name change, Pete has decided to hide out for a while in Sanderson. He has befriended Larry, and works as the receptionist for the discount ninja business.

Also, there may be a special bonus characters:
Gazpacho Fernandes: Gazpacho was pursuing a career as a costumed superhero in Mexico when he learned about the legendary Chupacabra, and he decided that if he could find and capture the mythical creature his fame would be secured.
He was following what he believed to be the trail of the Chupacabra, and somehow ended up in Sanderson, MN. He now runs a taco stand by day and hunts the "goat-sucker" by night.

OK, there is probably no reason anybody would ever need to know any of that. However, it was kicking around my brain, and now I have subjected you all to my madness. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Friday Night Fail: Resurrection

Screenshots and videos had been leaked out of Japan of a game known as [eM]-eNCHANT arM-, and they were all sorts of amazing. The cinematics were jaw dropping, the in-game graphics looked great, and as details were released the game looked and sounded better and better.
When it came to the States, it got a new name, Enchanted Arms, and the excitement that comes from being the first turn-based RPG.

In many ways, Enchanted Arms does quite a lot right. It could be argued that, as the first RPG for the console, we were willing to forgive a bit more just to play with hit points and experience, but it really did suck me in at the start. The graphics are actually really good, the characters diverse and detailed, and the sound is also pretty impressive.
Where the game shines, though, is the battle system. A cross between turn-based and strategy, it's unique and what really sucks you in early on. The battles are random (the bane of my existence), and when the characters enter the fray they are placed onto a 3 X 3 grid. The enemies are also on their own grid, and as the round starts the player decides where their characters are going to move on the grid and what actions they will perform. Attacks and magic have different ranges and effects, and character speed decides who moves next. Since you choose your moves right at the start of the round, but an enemy could attack before your characters, there is a certain degree of strategy and advance thought involved. In addition, characters and enemies have certain strengths and weaknesses, so there is that to take into account as well.
As the battles progress, characters build up partner points as well as special points. The special points allow you to unleash crazy powers, and when more than one character has a full partner meter they'll link their attacks for more destructive power. There's a fair amount of balance involved.
All in all, there's a lot to like in the battle system of Enchanted Arms, though like any RPG it starts to wear after hundreds of fights. Fortunately, there is an auto-battle option that allows you to speed through the skirmishes, but every now and then I found myself manually tearing through fights just to enjoy this original system. Also, bonus points for the ability to fast-forward battles. Once you choose your moves, you can hold down the Y button and speed through everyone's attacks. Just a nice touch, especially when some of the special powers are pretty elaborate (though an option to skip the animation entirely would have been preferable).

The game also features monster collection, but this also is done slightly differently. Throughout the adventure you buy, find, and fight for "golem cores", and when you have the right materials you can build the core into a monster. You can then swap out three of your four party members (your main character stays) with these monsters. You can carry several monsters at once, and customize your party any time between battles, and when you reach a shop (which are not only in towns but located throughout dungeons) you can trade held golems for stored ones. Golems come in different shapes and sizes, and have a variety of different powers, so there's a lot of options to play with. Honestly, I mostly stuck to the human characters, especially as they got more powerful, but it is fun to mix and match and see what's available. You can also take a team of golems online and battle others, a neat idea that maybe four people ever tried.

So, if I've done nothing but rave about the game so far, why did it end up as a Friday Night Fail? Simply because, while there are cool elements, the game experience is ultimately silly and boring.

First off, we have the story. It actually starts out decent, a little different from the cliches found in so many RPG's. While it does get bizarre and nonsensical as the game progresses, the ideas presented at the start make you wish they could have followed through on the promise. There are cities that are a mix of tech and magic, politics, and weapons from ancient wars (the golems) being resurrected and wreaking havoc. The main character, Atsuma, has a mysterious right arm with weird powers, and when his city is decimated he heads out on his adventure.

Special lose and fail goes to Atsuma's friend, a cross-dresser who is so over-the-top stereotypically homosexual that I (a straight man) was offended. Really, the game started to go sour the moment he opened his mouth.

Over the course of the game, the promise falls apart into nonsense. There are still glimmers of the original idea now and again, but at some point during play I just stopped caring.
Most of the problem, with the story and the game itself, is that the writing is absolutely terrible. The voice acting is bad, but the writing is atrocious. There is actually an entire conversation of one-word statements (Really? Res. Really? Yes! Oh. Huh. Oh! Wow.), and the writers take whatever ideas they may have had and destroy them with some of the shoddiest dialogue I've come across in a long time. I'd also like to point out that one character's name is actually pronounced drastically differently by different voice actors, and the spelling varies from time to time as well.

As a result of not caring about the plot or the characters, the game just becomes boring. It's pretty long, about 40 hours or so, but it just reached a point where I was forcing myself to play to the end.
That's perhaps the biggest sin Enchanted Arms commits: offering up some cool concepts at the start, and then crushing them with poor execution.

There are other flaws as well, of course. The difficulty isn't consistent and doesn't always offer a feeling of a gradual progression, as you'll be fine for a while and suddenly face a fight in which you're slaughtered in seconds. I applaud the option to replay a fight, instead of automatically going back to the last time you saved, but if you can't win then you'll have no choice. As I mentioned before, they threw in lengthy special attack sequences that are cool at first, but there's no option to skip them once you've seen them a hundred times.

Enchanted Arms just fails to follow through on its initial promises, and as the hours tick by it just gets more and more stale until you're struggling to reach a conclusion you stopped caring about ages ago. It gets boring, it gets nonsensical, the writing sinks to a new level of terrible, and the characters are outright annoying through much of the game.

Ultimately, the game's greatest sin is squandering its potential, and it fails because if you look really hard you can see what it could have been.

The Battle Continues...

Jack Thompson is a bit like gaming's final boss, the big evil that we'll need to defeat before finally winning our struggle against the detractors who are trying to legislate everything we play.
Fortunately, he's not a big Phantasy Star Dark Falz sort of creature, a massive monstrosity with all sorts of powers and the ability to slaughter an unprepared player in seconds. No, he's more like Skeletor, lots of obnoxious talk and plans, but in the end not very effective in the execution of these grand schemes.

His most recent example of lose and fail involves Utah, more specifically a bill known as HB 353.

The bill was co-authored by Thompson, and had gained approval from both the Utah House and Senate. It then went to the governor's desk, at which three things could have happened. He could approve it, turning it into a law (for more information on the process, recall your School House Rock). He could veto it, effectively killing the bill, or he could do nothing. If he chose the last option, it would automatically become law at the beginning of next year.

Republican governor Jon Huntsman has chosen to veto the bill, which had received overwhelming support in the Utah government system.

Essentially, the bill was a variation on the same song we've been hearing for a while now. According to the meaure, retailers could face criminal charges if caught selling games to someone outside of the "age range" of the product. It was actually worded to cover more than just games, and in fact many different forms of entertainment would have been blanketed by the bill. Movies, books, toys, even TV shows would be caught in the net that was HB 353.
In essence, it targets those retailers that state to have age-verification policies in place to prevent the sale of games or whatever to kids. For example, Gamestop has a pretty strict company-wide policy concerning the sale of M-rated games to anyone under 17 (an employee can actually be immediately fired for doing so). This means that, if the law were passed, a Gamestop store that accidentally sold a game to a minor could be faced with criminal charges. What's interesting is that, under the wording of the bill, the charges would be a result not necessarily of the sale itself, but because the company states that they have a policy against selling M-rated games to minors.

Realistically, the bill would have been limited to M or R ratings. A T-rated game is recommended for people 13 and up, so if a retailer sold one to a 10-year-old they could have faced the same charges. No retailer actually enforces a T or PG-13 sale restriction, but if they say that they have any sort of age guidelines they'd have been liable under the wording of the bill.

The bill has been vetoed, and Huntsman's reasoning made a pretty good amount of sense. While he applauded the desire to keep innapropriate content out of the hands of kids, he felt that the wording of the bill was too broad and would be found unconstitutional and a violation of the First Amendment. He then explained that he felt the bill would create an opposite effect from it's goal, and would actually cause retailers to repeal their own policies concerning the sale of items to certain age groups:
The industries most affected by this new requirement indicated that rather than risk being held liable under this bill, they would likely choose to no longer issue age appropriate labels on goods and services.
Therefore, the unintended consequence of the bill would be that parents and children would have no labels to guide them in determining the age appropriateness of the goods or service, thereby increasing children’s potential exposure to something they or their parents would have otherwise determined was inappropriate under the voluntary labeling system now being recognized and embraced by a significant majority of vendors.

In layman's terms: if Gamestop (just to use an example) decided not to enforce any ratings rules in their Utah stores, then they wouldn't be held liable for selling M-rated games to minors. They could conceivably cover up the ratings and desccriptors on game packages, and never face any charges of any kind.

Really, the wording of the bill was pretty stupid in that respect. I'm not a fan of any legislation that tries to step on the toes of the ESRB or the industry (or any entertainment industry), or tries to take control of how games are sold and such, but this one seemed especially poorly constructed.

So, of course, Skelet... I mean, Jack Thompson, has tossed in his two cents on the matter in a letter to Gov. Huntsman. In the letter, he defends the "rightness" and "constitutionality" of the bill.
He goes on to state that the "facts" are that the movie and games industries cannot opt out of their age rating systems, and accuses the governor of not wanting to be confused by this fact. He claims that the governor "bought their [the entertainment industries] red herring statement that they would", and states to Huntsman that "you got suckered".
See, adherence to the ESRB ratings is, in fact, a voluntary action. In fact, the ESRB itself was created to prevent the government from stepping in and legislating the industry. So, we can't opt out of a voluntary system? Also, in none of the articles that I read was there any mention of the gaming or movie industry threatening to do so. It was perhaps pointed out as a possibility, and Huntsman wisely took this risk into account, but there was no indication of any big movement by retailers to do anything so drastic.

Jackie goes on in his letter, trying to explain to the governor that there is no First Amendment of constitutional problem with the bill because there is no attempt to regulate content or punish action based upon content.
Which is the interesting difference between HB 353 and other game-regulating bills that have come before. The bills usually try to prohibit the sale of M-rated games to minors, offering penalties if done so. HB 353 actually punishes a retailer for selling something their policies state they won't. It attacks the promise, not the content.
Still, Gov. Huntsman is probably correct in the fact that this could have issues down the line. In addition, he was afraid that many retailers would stop selling games altogether to just avoid any problems. My guess is he's taking into account the damage to the economy and to many businesses if that were to happen.

Thompson threatens to return with a bill to ban the sale of these products altogether if Huntsman does not overturn the veto. He brings up the recent tragic school shooting in Germany (in which games were blamed) and in this country, stating that they were caused by these "murder simulation products" (one of his favorite phrases) and that there is the potential for more by copycat teens who are "fraudulently" sold the games.
I've been a game retailer, and can safely say that for the most part it isn't the stores that are fraudulently selling kids games, but the kids using fraud to buy them. Fake ID's, getting friends to buy the games for them, asking strangers in the parking lot to buy for them, and whatever else they come up with.
In addition, Thompson likes to fall back onto his "games cause violence" stance. It's actually gotten pretty old, but I don't think he can actually go a full day without saying the words "murder simulator". He's hardly the only one, as there are plenty of people who are trying (unsuccessfully) to prove that games cause kids to become monsters, but he's one of the most vocal.

So gaming has won another victory, helped by a politician who saw the bigger picture and the potential consequences HB 353 could cause, and Jack Thompson's immediate response is the typical letter condemning the governor's actions. A show we've seen before, one we'll probably (and unfortunately) see again.
The disbarred Thompson will no doubt be back, like an end boss that just refuses to stay down. There'll be a sequel, another episode, and the battle will sadly rage on for a little longer.

Fortunately, as we've all seen, the over-dramatic bad guys in these cartoons never win...

Paradigm Shift?

At GDC this week, a company known as OnLive (yep, I've never heard of them either) unveiled what they believe to be the future of gaming.
The system doesn't seem to have some slick, marketing-department-approved name yet, so for the remainder of this post we'll just call it the "OnLive".
The OnLive system seems primarily designed for PC usage, though they do specify that there will be a set-top box that will allow the device to work through a television. What it does is allows the user to stream games directly to the PC/ TV and be played without the need to purchase a disc or anything like that. So, you decide you want to play a game. Rather than worrying about which console it is for, or having to go buy a copy, you just find it on the OnLive and start playing it, without the need for downloading or anything.
The company claims that there will be no lag, as long as your internet connection meets the minimum requirements, and any multiplayer functions in the console releases will be available in the OnLive version as well. In fact, many of the online functions have similarities with Microsoft's Xbox Live service.
Several AAA studios (EA, Ubisoft, etc) have already promised support to OnLive. The idea is to have top-tier games available the same day as the retail release, available to play without ever leaving your couch. Of course, the first-party manufacturers (Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony) have not offered any support, and neither have second parties (like Lionhead). So if you want to play Fable 2 or Super Smash Brothers, you're still going to need a console. This is why, the OnLive big-wigs say, gamers will still hold onto their consoles through this generation. For the next one, though, they say "all bets are off", as if they expect the "big three" to suddenly come around and start letting their games be distributed through someone else.

I have no problem with the concept of this. The idea that digital distribution is the future has been bandied about for quite some time now, and the success of the Xbox Live Arcade, Virtual Console, and Playstation Store prove that customers are willing to download a game if it's something they want to play. I'd bet good money that all of the major manufacturers have some vision of a digital download console, a future generation machine.

The makers of OnLive point out that this is a far cheaper alternative than a retail release for their developer partners, as it eliminated the need for packaging and such, and therefore more profitable. It will also eliminate piracy, as well as the used sales of games. They also point out that it will be easier for publishers to track gameplay: what games are being played, how long people play them, et cetera, and therefore make more informed decisions once armed with this type of raw user data.

So far, it sounds pretty amazing. Being able to play a game without having to go to the store and buy a $60 disc? Needing only one system to play games, without worrying about exclusives and such? A machine that's (on paper) future proof, as all upgrades are done behind the scenes and all you have to do is download the latest titles without needing to buy a whole new console?

Here's where the house of cards falls apart:
First of all, the big three are never going to give up their respective empires and throw their hat into someone else's ring. They will still put out their own consoles, still have exclusive games, and therefore people will still buy the latest machines. If digital distribution really is the future of gaming, as so many people say, then you can be sure that the major players will release their own systems with which to capitalize on this and not let someone else steal their thunder.

Second, there's still a lot of information that OnLive has not yet revealed. They say there will be an initial fee for the OnLive software download (or the purchase of the set top box). There will also be fees for game downloads, and fluctuating prices based on whether you want to play a game for a bit or "purchase" it completely.
The nice thing about a disc is I can buy it, play it when I feel like it, and go back and forth on my own gaming whims. Hell, I haven't played Elder Scrolls: Oblivion in months, but I own the disc and therefore can do so whenever I choose. If I have to pay every time I feel like randomly playing the game for a bit, then I can see where the one-time purchase could be cheaper.

Third, OnLive is based upon the interweb. They do say that users will have to have a specific minimum connection speed, but we all know that there are so many factors that can screw that up. Look at Netflix for the Xbox 360. I've watched plenty of movies through my console, but every now and again it suddenly stops while the system acclimates to a "connection speed" issue, and then restarts (sometimes at a worse resolution). So if I can't always watch a couple hour movie without issues, I'm supposed to believe that I can play a game for hours without the same issues?
What happens if your connection changes during play? What if it goes down entirely? I'd be pissed if I was in the middle of some deep RPG and suddenly lost an hour of work because Comcast hiccupped. The nice thing about a console is that it doesn't have to be online to be played. Even Xbox Live Arcade downloads get saved to your hard drive, so you can play them whenever you want regardless of internet status. A streamed game needs the connection.
There's another issue. My cable goes in and out when it feels like it. A big storm comes along, and cable goes out, and then I can't play any games? More accurately, what if I forget to pay my bill and they shut me off? I've spent days without internet or cable TV, but I can still pop in a disc and play a game. Hell, that's what keeps me sane when other entertainment options are unavailable.

These problems, in many ways, are what has been plaguing digital distribution all along and keeping it from true viability. So while OnLive claims to have all the answers in place, it'll be interesting to see how the reality behind the vision shapes up.
Of course, they do have the support of some big names, which is cool, but is that enough? I suppose time will tell.

This is not the first time a new player has entered the fray and claimed that their machine was going to revolutionize gaming. It actually happens pretty regularly. Every other Thursday, or something like that.
I remember back at one of the E3 shows I went to, seeing a machine called the Phantom (oh, what a truly ironic name). This machine had been talked about and hyped for quite a while before the show, and was supposed to revolutionize gaming. Basically, it was a set top box that would allow you to play PC games on your television. Actually, they claimed, it would play "any" PC game, regardless of specs. The guys behind it talked about it as if it was the best thing since sliced bread (a hard act to follow, as you well know), and it had already seen and missed more than a few release dates.
When I saw the system, the hype machine was clicking away at full speed. There were big screen TV's hooked up, with Phantom consoles attached, and reps for the company sitting on couches (to signify that you could play PC games in your living room, naturally) with gamers showing them the machine. The controller was a weird keyboard and mouse setup that you rested on your lap, and the booth was big and flashy and drawing people in left and right.
I still have a T-shirt, handed to me by some scantily clad booth babe, that has a glow-in-the-dark Phantom logo and the words "I Believe" printed on it. This was, of course, in retaliation to all the press that claimed that the Phantom was but a ghost. I keep it for the irony.
Obviously, we're not all sitting in our living rooms playing PC games on our TV's with our shiny Phantom consoles, so I think we can all see how this particular story ended.

So now another player has stepped up, claiming that they have a machine that will revolutionize gaming.
It remains to be seen if the OnLive will actually see life, or if it's just another phantom.

Cutscenes- The Annoyed Hero

Here's where this craziness started:
I've been posting on Destructoid.com now and again, as well as reading the various blogs posted by other gamers there.
This led me to find a bizarre site called www.xtranormal.com.

Essentially, it's a movie making site. First, you write up a script. Then you choose characters, camera angles, expressions, backgrounds, movements, et cetera, and the site does the rest.
The characters may look like Lego or Playmobil people, and the voices come from a semi-decent voice recognition system, but the end result is a charming little way to bring your words to life.

This got my wheels turning (which, admittedly, spin at a weird angle), and sparked the creation of a new feature here at The Grumbly Gamer's house of madness. I give you... Cutscenes.

Theoretically, I'll be posting a new entry into the feature every Saturday. Maybe Sunday. Definitely a weekend day.

So here we go. Please keep your hands and arms inside the ride at all times. No food, smoking, or flash photography allowed. Please move all the way down the row to insure that all guests will be able to find a seat, and make sure that your seat belts are securely fastened.

So, I welcome you all to Cutscenes, and I hope if nothing else you're (momentarily) entertained.

Our inaugural video tells the tale of a hapless ninja who went forth to rescue his girlfriend from a castle. Well, as he tells it, there wasn't much rescuing happening...

Friday Night Fail: Collector's Edition

You would think that, if we consider the stereotypical image often projected onto gamers, that there would be nothing better for them than the addition of naked boobs into their electronic entertainment.

Alas, this thinking unleashed The Guy Game onto Xbox and PS2 gamers, and the fourteen people that played it found that this is not the case. Well, there were probably two that got into it, but we won't discuss them. They're creepy.

The concept behind this train wreck is as follows: The Guy Game is a trivia game, in which players answer basic knowledge and pop culture questions. However, the twist is that these questions are also being asked to a selection of girls in a series of grainy full-motion videos. The player answers the question, but then must decide whether or not the girl in the video got the same question right or wrong.
As the player answers questions correctly, they gain points. If they guess the girl's response properly, their level raises (from flaccid to semi-hard to... you get the point), and the higher this level the more skin you are subjected to. If the girl gets the question wrong, they have to flash the camera. At the lower "levels", bars block the naughty bits. As the player's score increases, the bars give way to a digitized blur, and finally the drunk college girls are displayed in all their (topless) glory.

The videos are entertaining, in a horrific way. They're all filmed at spring break, hosted by some guy who is obviously drunk, and the bikini-clad girls are volunteers from the partying crowd. Some of the girls answer the reasonably simple questions exactly as one would expect (read: very wrong), but then suddenly one gets an answer correct. Probably by accident, but they do.

As you progress, there's a woman who occasionally pops up to offer some strange form of encouragement. When you're doing poorly, she suddenly appears and chastises you with such witticism as "What's wrong? Don't you want to see titties?" Classy.

So, how could the combination of drunk college girls and a trivia game go so amazingly wrong?

One of the biggest flaws is simply that the game is boring. The questions are pretty insipid for the most part, taken from some poor man's version of Trivial Pursuit, and oddly enough there is no randomization feature at all. So, every time you start a "stage" (you unlock more stages with different girls as you progress), you are treated to the exact same questions that you had the last time you played that stage. Every query is in the exact same place, the answers (obviously) don't change, and the responses from the girls are the same. The mini-games are lame and pointless, and again there just isn't a lot of variety involved. So there isn't any real reason to play again outside of getting everything right just to see topless girls. Really, I'm not sure I want to meet the person that finds that entertaining. Definitely not going to shake their hand...

Once you get past the very basic trivia game aspect of the title, things don't get much better. The video quality is poor, and the host is entertaining for a few minutes before getting obnoxious, and the entire thing just seems like it was assembled by a group of drunken frat boys.

Then, of course, we have the girls. None of them are actually very attractive. None of them are trolls by any means, but neither are they stunning. Some are better than others, but a cursory search on the internet will bring about pages of topless girls that are far more beautiful and require fewer stupid questions first.

So the very idea behind The Guy Game is that gamers will work through puerile gameplay just to catch a glimpse of some skin. The developers must also assume that when not playing games we're trying to see some action on a scrambled porn channel.

Realistically, though, there are far better trivia games out there, and if you play one while flipping through a Playboy magazine you'll have a better time than you will with The Guy Game.

Saving Sega: Conclusion

I think I've made my point over the last several posts. The problem that pervades all of the franchises mentioned herein is, quite simply, that Sega took some remarkable and quite honestly classic series and took them in a direction that drove down the quality considerably.

Stop guessing at what you think gamers want to play, stop slapping the names onto any old product just to dupe fans into shelling out their money. Look at the reasons these games have fans in the first place, and do right by them. I'm not saying that Sega shouldn't move these games forward, but move them forward in the right direction.

Look at Nintendo. For the most part their flagship franchises: Mario, Zelda, and Metroid, have stood the test of time due to the care the company gives them. Even when they've gone in a completely new direction, like Metroid Prime's first person view or Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker's graphical style, they've retained enough of what made the games special in the first place, and the quality of the games have remained high enough that most fans looked past the changes and accepted the games as a part of their respective series.

Sega still has some great games out there, and there are still more coming out that are probably going to be all sorts of awesome. Some games, though, the ones that fans stick by and still play, need to be handled with much more care than they've obviously been given.

I was giddy with anticipation for the 360 Sonic the Hedgehog, but played it for about four minutes before I apologized to my console for making it play that piece of crap. I played Phantasy Star Universe regularly, but knew that I was just trying to relive the glory days on Phantasy Star Online, and I did eventually just get bored and move on, which seems pretty sacriligeous for such a Phantasy Star fanboy as myself.

I'm a serious Sega fan, have been since the Genesis days. I have all of their consoles, including all the add-ons. I wear a Sonic the Hedgehog watch and a PSU T-shirt, and have the Dreamcast swirl incorporated into a tattoo on my arm (and am seriously looking at the Phantasy Star Online logo...). I've stood by them for a long time.

I just don't think they care about me anymore, or care about the titles that made me such a hardcore fanboy in the first place.

So get with it, Sega. Stop listening to your marketing department, to the people telling you what gamers want to play, and start listening to the gamers that want to play.

Saving Sega: Shining Force

If you're a fan of tactics-based RPG's, you owe it to yourself to track down and play Shining Force.

There were two entries on the Genesis, as well as one for the Sega CD (which was a compilation/ upgrade of the ones for the Game Gear). There was also Shining Force 3 for the Saturn, though the USA honestly got hosed on that deal. The game was actually released in three parts, and each part told the story from the viewpoint of a different main character. Throughout the games these individuals crossed paths, but also branched off onto separate quests as they all fought towards the same goal. The complete trilogy of games told the entire tale, but we only got the first part on these shores. While still a complete game in its own right, fans couldn't help but feel a little (read: a lot) jealous of the Japanese on this one. So, before I delve any further into this particular series, I first have to say that Sega should really bring a Shining Force 3 complete story disc thing out.

Shining Force was a lot of fun. In towns and on the world map it was similar to any role-player, but when you got into battle (all the fights were at preset points through the story, there was no random battling), it was a strategy/RPG. You also, as you traveled, could recruit a large number of characters into your force, but could only command twelve at a time. What was cool was, in battle, when you chose an action like an attack or spell, the view shifted to a faux-3D scene in which you watched your action take place. So, if you attacked an enemy, instead of your tiny sprite waving around, you got to watch a reasonably detailed brief cutscene of the strike. This type of cinematic battle has also been used in other strategy RPG games, including the Fire Emblem series. Shining Force stands as one of my favorite games from the 16-bit era, and really a great example of a fun strategy RPG game. It's not as hard as Fire Emblem, not as huge as Final Fantasy Tactics, it had neat characters (like the werewolf), and just seemed more light and fun than some other entries in the genre while still maintaining a pretty intense level of strategy.

Shining Force has been made available for download on the Wii Virtual Console, has seen a slightly modified release on the GBA (they added some card collecting element, but otherwise it was intact), and both Shining Force and Shining Force 2 (as well as Shining in the Darkness) have been made available again on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection.

There have been many offshoots in the Shining franchise over the years, and the series has broached a variety of RPG genres. It should be noted that "Shining Force" is a particular series, and the one that I will be discussing more in a little bit, but there have been other "Shining" titles from Sega that share some similarities. All are RPG's, despite being in different sub-genres. They share a similar art style and generally lighter tone, and for the most part share a pretty high level of quality. Shining in the Darkness (for the Genesis, and actually came before the Force games, though a true Shining nerd knows that the boss of Darkness is the child of the boss in Force) and Shining the Holy Ark (Saturn) were dungeon crawls and both damn good ones, while Shining Wisdom (Saturn), Shining Tears (PS2), and the Shining Soul (GBA) were action-RPG's. The action entries into the series, honestly, weren't as strong overall. They still shared the Shining flavor for the most part, but just didn't hit the same heights that some of their sister titles reached (though I did really like Wisdom).

For the PS2, the Shining Force name itself has come back, as Shining Force NEO and Shining Force EXA.

I was pretty excited about the release of these games, right up until they came out and I saw that they were nothing more than mediocre action-RPGs. Gone was the deep tactics of the original games. Gone was the unique art style, replaced with an unexciting cel-shaded look.

I have no problems with offshoots in the Shining canon, and have played pretty much all of them, but if it says Shining Force I expect it to play like the old ones. If it were "Shining- something else", then I can consider it to be just another entry in the varying branches of the tree, but when it has "Force" at the end I expect something pretty specific.

I'm not sure which suit at Sega decided that the entire basis of the series had to be scrapped and replaced with such generic gameplay, but they should be fired. As a harcore fan of the Force games, it would have been faster to just come to my house and kick me in the nads.

So what needs to be done? Well, Shining Force Feather is a serious step in the right direction, at least in theory. Due out for the DS sooner or later (hopefully sooner, though I'd expect a holiday release if I know my marketing), it is said to be a return to form and actually be a strategy RPG. We'll have to see the end result, of course, but one can hope.

Sega needs to go back to the drawing board. Figure out what made the originals so much fun and such classics (maybe ask some actual gamers, instead of the mentally challenged monkeys they apparently fill your focus groups with). Maybe make some clear lines in the sand where the Shining franchise is concerned: "Force" is for tactics, maybe "Wisdom" or something for an action RPG, maybe bring back a dungeon crawler series (though those aren't exactly popular these days). Make them different series within the same franchise, though. This way fans of a particular type of game will know what they're getting.

Saving Sega: Phantasy Star

There's two parts to this one: Phantasy Star and Phantasy Star Online/ Universe.

The Phantasy Star series began as Sega's answer to Final Fantasy. The original game appeared on the Master System, followed by three more on the Genesis. The last game in the "traditional" RPG series was Phantasy Star IV, which came out towards the end of the Genesis days. The series had a futuristic setting, drastically different from the swords and sorcery of other RPG series at the time, but the quests were similarly long and epic. The games, especially the first couple, were also known for a rather punishing level of difficulty.

The graphics were impressive, offering larger characters than the genre was generally known for and a unique behind-the-back view for the turn-based battles. The original game actually had a pretty standard overworld, but once in a dungeon the game shifted to a first-person dungeon crawl. There were still random turn-based battles, but the vewpoint was more Wizardry than Final Fantasy. Plus, again, the series meshed together fantasy and a sci-fi future setting that was especially unique at the time. The games in the series were, for the most part, unrelated to one another, but fans could often catch nods and references from one to the next (fun fact: the rogue ship in Phantasy Star Universe is the "Landeel", also the main character's last name in the original Japanese Phantasy Star). They even had a recurring character, Wren, not unlike Final Fantasy's Cid.

The three Genesis games were put onto the Sega Genesis Collection, and all four were collected onto Phantasy Star Collection for the GBA. They have also been recently collected on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, with the original Master System game being unlockable (beat the first boss in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in two-player mode).

Seha has pretty much moved on from this aspect of the series, morphing it into the online versions (more on those in a sec), but I believe that a return to its roots would be a huge deal. Hell, Final Fantasy has something like a gajillion games out in the series now, and every one is a big event, so why not bring a turn-based Phantasy Star back into the gaming world? Even a new DS version would be something, as long as it doesn't somehow become a clone of Pokemon or a card-based game or anything like that. Keep the same themes, the same settings, bring back Wren, and don't try to make too many changes to the formula. It's a turn-based RPG, it should remain that way, and despite Sega (and others, to be fair) thinking that the genre is dead there's still a massive fanbase for this type of game, and this series in particular. Tinkering with the basics has ruined too many other franchises (*cough*Sonic*cough*).

A Phantasy Star V for the new consoles would be amazing, a sprawling adventure with cutting edge graphics and awesome cinematics, and is something that Sega should be seriously considering. I doubt they are, but they should be.

In the days of the Dreamcast, Sega released Phantasy Star Online. The first online console RPG, PSO let you make a character and join up with others on quests through a futuristic world very reminiscient of the original Phantasy Star setting. Really, the game was nothing more than a "run through, kill monsters, raise levels, get loot, lather/rinse/repeat" kind of game, but now players were doing that with other players as well. There was a story, of sorts, and there were a ton of missions, and honestly I lost countless hours of my life to the game.

The addiction for a lot of people (including myself) was pretty serious, long before the days of Everquest and World of Warcraft. The game had an offline mode as well, which allowed you to bring your character through a slim storyline, but the real meat of the game was obviously playing online. I met people from all over the country, joined a clan, and wasted hours with friends I'd never meet long before these were staples of the gaming world.

It wasn't the same as the original Phantasy Star series, which was a bit of a disappointment for fans, but it was still really freaking cool. Taking down a dragon with other people as a customized character sporting high-tech weapons was enough for many of us to accept this new direction, at least for the time being.

Not long after, Sega released Phantasy Star Online Version 2, really more of an expansion pack than anything else. It had some more missions and items, raised the level cap, but wasn't the true sequel that fans were hoping it would be. It also introduced the idea of charging a monthly fee to play. I recall it only being like $5 a month or something to purchase a "Hunter's License", and if you didn't want to pay you could still play the first game online for free. You just couldn't access any of the V2 content. Some people were outraged, some just dealt with it. Hell, it was cheaper and safer than crack, despite being just as addictive, so there you go.

PSO was re-released on the Xbox, playable over Live, and also on the Gamecube, which you could play online if you were one of the three people in the world who bought the broadband adapter. Both of these games were dubbed Phantasy Star Online Episodes 1 & 2,as they included the entire original Dreamcast game as well as a new storyline. There was also an Episode 3 for the Gamecube, but this one was a serious departure: a card-based game. While one of the few card games I can actually stand playing (I actually really got into it, more as a Phantasy Star fan than anything else), it was a pretty big leap for the series. I'm honestly not sure how many people played it.

To much fanboy expectations, Sega released the long awaited next entry, Phantasy Star Universe, for the 360, PS2, and PC. To be fair, I did play this game quite a bit (and have recently been jonesing and trying to talk myself out of going back), but I'm also painfully aware that I was paying $10 a month for a game that's not very good. I played it a lot, but felt dirty while doing it, not unlike a tawdry night in Vegas.

What went wrong with the winning formula from PSO to PSU? Simple: It didn't evolve at all over the years.

I know I said that Sonic fails because it tried to evolve, so why does PSU fail because it didn't? Online gaming has come far in the past few years, and the wide-eyed innocence we had playing PSO has given way to a much more net-savvy culture. PSO was new, and it was cool, and (at least at first) it was free. Now, we simply expect more out of our online experiences, expecially if we're expected to shell out money each month.

Phantasy Star Universe, like its predecessor, has an offline mode. It's a really bad story with really silly characters, and it plays exactly like the online mode. Unlike its predecessor, though, there's absolutely no relation between the two modes. In PSO, you played your avatar through the single-player story, and any experience or items stayed the same through either mode. In PSU, nothing transfers between the modes, so that cool gun you're wielding as dorky Ethan Waber in solo play is never held by the kick-ass CAST you're running around online with. They have since, with some of the newer download missions, allowed players to use their own character in a story that continues the offline tale, but it's not quite the same thing and a shinign example of too little, too late.

In PSO, somehow we never got bored with the fact that there weren't that many unique missions, but it was a different time. Gaming has evolved, online gaming has especially taken leaps forward. We just expect more for our money these days. Paying to play the same mission over and over again just doesn't hold our interest anymore. If you're going to offer a game that doesn't really get new content, has the exact same gameplay from several years ago, and doesn't really try to stand out in any way, at least offer it up for free. Most MMO games that are pay-to-play at least offer regular new content, patches and downloads, and special events. With Phantasy Star Universe, things like that are few and far in-between. There were cool aspects, like the private "room" each character has that can be decorated with items and the occasional special event statue, and the shop that allows you to sell your unwanted stuff yourself instead of depending on the in-game NPC stores, but it's all just shadows of what your average MMO offers.

I'll probably play Phantasy Star Universe again, because I really am that much of a fan, but I also feel like, as a fan, Sega is giving me the middle finger every time I play.

I am pretty excited about Phantasy Star Zero, coming out this fall for the DS. The same gameplay, handheld, with free online play? Very promising.

If the online series is going to continue, though, it needs an overhaul. Stop charging, or at least make it seem like we're getting something for our monthly fee. Treat it as a real MMO, or a game that people happen to play online, but make a decision either way. Hell, if all you're going to let us do is grind with a few friends, collect rare loot, and play the same missions, we may as well all go play Diablo for free.

To sum up:

Phantasy Star V: Get on it. Real, turn-based RPG that brings the classic series into the modern day.

Phantasy Star Universe: Add some variety, give the series a facelift, and make the online play free or worth the monthly charge.

Saving Sega: Sonic the Hedgehog

No other character or series symbolizes Sega quite like Sonic the Hedgehog. Their mascot in the olden days of gaming, the "blue blur", "dude with a 'tude", or whatever other moniker the marketing guys gave him, the little blue guy has seen a lot of action over the years and has become one of the most recognizable characters in the industry.

The original game, Sonic the Hedgehog, was released on the Genesis and followed with three sequels on that system. Each game added upon its predecessors in gameplay and graphics, and each game was excellent. Sonic CD, on the Sega CD, was the pinnacle of the 2D titles, but from there the series took a dip. Unlike Mario's diversions into other genres (sports, racing, puzzles), which were for the most part solid games that happened to feature Mario characters, Sonic's were generally poor. His attempts at racing, Sonic R for the Saturn and Sonic Riders for the Xbox, PS2, and Cube were both disappointing, even more when you consider that it's a character whose entire existence is based around speed.

There was a bit of an upswing when Sonic made the transition to 3D with the Dreamcast's Sonic Adventure, a solid game across the board. Well, the Sonic sections were cool, but the rest was shaky.

Sonic and the Secret Rings, the hedgehog's Wii outing, had a lot of promise but was hampered by a shoddy control scheme. Then we have the next-gen game for the 360 and PS3, simply titled Sonic the Hedgehog. I'm not even going to go into detail as to how bad this game is. Suffice to say that if this is the direction Sega's mascot is going, then it's best to just let him go gracefully into that dark cold night. I will say, to it's credit, that the opening cutscene was gorgeous. The game just went entirely to hell after that.

They tried to redeem the series with Sonic Unleashed, which faced a lot of the same issues that some of the other games had: not to shabby when you're playing as Sonic, but lose and fail when you're doing something else (in this case, playing as the Sonic "werehog" thing).

Continue to recycle his golden years with downloads and re-releases, let the kiddies know what gaming was like back when the mascots ruled, but stop trying to keep the series alive if this is the care he's going to continue getting.

There are glimmers of hope, though. The DS game, Sonic Rush, put the little guy back into 2D and was actually a good game. Bioware's Sonic RPG, Sonic Chronicles, also for the DS, is surprisingly good. Of course, when you have one of the premier role-playing companies on the job there's definitely some promise.

So what does Sonic need? Sega needs to stop trying to update and revolutionize the series, trying to force the games into some form of next-gen relevance. Putting the game back into 2D would be a huge step in the right direction, using the power of the new systems to make everything look absolutely gorgeous. Stop adding characters, trying to add different gameplay elements. Sonic equals speed, so just stick with that. If we want to fish, we'll go buy a fishing game. If we want exploration, we'll get a Tomb Raider. If we just want speed and crazy loops and golden rings, we should get just that from our Sonic games.

Maybe online play, where one controls Sonic and another Tails/ Knuckles/ Sally or whoever, or maybe some simple sort of competitive racing, but that's hardly necessary. Perhaps the series should stick with the handhelds for a bit, the last real bastion of 2D gaming, or even just a new game in download form on the consoles (like Mega Man 9). The original games were fun for their simplicity, and that's what needs to come back. No complex storylines, exploration stages, or whatever else they've been trying to force on the fans.

In short, before trying to make a new Sonic game, Sega should go back and play the old ones for a bit. Stop trying to make the game "cool", when you've obviously forgotten what made the originals so cool in the first place.

Saving Sega

(Author's note: I am actually reprinting a slightly modified version of an article that I had written for a site a few years ago. In an industry known for remakes and rehashes, this idea isn't anything new)

Legends speak of an epic battle, a feud between two titans. While there were other skirmishes before, it is believed that it was these two giants that started the "system wars" that have raged ever since.

On one side, the mighty Nintendo, lead by a chubby Italian plumber with a penchant for stomping on turtles. Their foe was the army of Sega, their general a speedy blue hedgehog armed with blast processing.

Way back in the 8-bit days, when Nintendo ruled the world with the NES, Sega countered with their Master System, a technically superior console that was hampered by a lack of quality software. While Sega themselves put out some classics, most notably the original Phantasy Star, Nintendo had a headstart on the market and they had deals with the third-parties. This meant that the Master System never enjoyed nearly the same success as the NES.

When the dawn of the 16-bit war came, Sega lead the way with the Genesis. When Nintendo followed with the SNES, the battle escalated. Both systems had amazing software: Mario was met with Sonic the Hedgehog, Final Fantasy was countered with Phantasy Star, and in the end both consoles rocked in their own right. Whether you were playing Legend of Zelda or Shining Force, or any of the more obscure titles that graced one console or another, in the 16-bit console war it was the gamers that really won the day.

Sega attempted multiple add-ons to the Genesis, but unfortunately this experiment didn't prove to be the success they had hoped. While the Sega CD did have some notable titles, such as Sonic CD (arguably the crowning achievement of the series), and some killer RPG's such as the original Lunar games, the expensive unit didn't catch on and was really only adopted by the hardcore gamers (yeah, like me. I still have an original one of those). The following add-on, the 32x, really became more of a joke than anything else. A small unit that promised to double the processing power of the Genesis, it had a handful of forgettable games and ultimately became a footnote in the decline of the 16-bit era (although, to be fair, Kolibri is still the finest example of hummingbird shooters one could hope to find).

In the years that followed, and as a new player arose in Sony, Sega's empire began to crumble. The launch of their next console, the Saturn, was nothing short of disastrous. The system was expensive, and Sega actually released the unit a few months ahead of the expected launch. This meant that retailers and developers were caught unaware, and as a result the Saturn didn't get that early push a well executed launch can bring.

In addition, the system was difficult to program for, as it utilized a multi-core processor that had not been seen in a console before. The system was not lacking in power, but its strength was in the realm of 2D gaming (Guardian Heroes for the win, people), at a time when the Playstation was touting its 3D capabilities to the world. Again, there were some notable titles on the system, Dragon Force and Panzer Dragoon immediately spring to mind (and are both fetching astounding prices online these days), but the console just failed to catch on outside of the Sega faithful (got me one of those, too).

Enter the Dreamcast, Sega's last ditch effort at the console market. The Dreamcast was well ahead of its time, and even now if you mention the console in a room full of hardcore gamers you'll most likely get fond sighs followed by an in-depth conversation as to how awesome it really was. An onboard modem offered online gaming, which lead to the first major console online game: Phantasy Star Online. For the record, that game has sucked away more of my life than perhaps any before or after.

The system had a unique memory card, called the VMU, which looked like a tiny Gameboy. Certain games, such as Sonic Adventure and Skies of Arcadia, had mini-games you could download to the VMU and take along with you. In the case of Sonic, you raised a virtual pet called a Chao, which you could then upload back into the game.

The VMU's screen was also visible when the unit was plugged into the controller, and many games utilized this extra bit of space for health bars or even directions to learn fighting combos (Shenmue). While really nothing more than a gimmick in most cases, it was something that the other consoles weren't offering. Unfortunately, the Saturn had left a bad taste in many a mouth, making many buyers hold off to see if the Dreamcast was going to follow the same path. At the same time, the Playstation 2 was announced, and the death bells sadly tolled for Sega's final console

After announcing their surrender in the hardware wars, Sega stayed in the game as a third-party developer. While many fanboys cried foul, others conceded that bringing Sega's expertise to more systems couldn't be a bad thing. Thus a chapter in history was closed, and another opened, and soon Sega titles could be seen on all three new consoles (PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube).

Admittedly, many of the games they released were ports of previously released Dreamcast titles. Sonic Adventure, Skies of Arcadia, Shenmue 2, and Phantasy Star Online all got remakes on other consoles. The occasional sequel, such as Panzer Dragoon Orta (Xbox) cropped up.

There were some new franchises birthed as well: Monkey Ball, Feel the Magic, and others were released. While Sega wasn't necessarily a top-tier developer, they released a steady stream of decent games for every system, even if most of those games came from the same few franchises. They did publish some standouts, such as the creepy Condemned on Xbox 360, but for the most part they released and re-released the titles that were synonymous with the Sega name.

Over the last several years, though, it almost seems like Sega is going out of their way to crush their old franchises into the ground. Poor entries in popular series, drastic offshoots, and a seeming lack of direction plague some of Sega's most famous franchises. Names that once fell from gamers' lips with reverence now do so with a sad little laugh, and even the staunchest of Sega supporters (that'd be me) is hard pressed to stand behind many of the products we've seen of late.When the biggest release they've had in a while is a collection of old Genesis games, then you know there is something amiss.

I've picked three of the most popular and classic franchises, titles that were pretty much synonymous with the name Sega when they were a hardware developer. Over the next few posts, I'll examine where they started, their high points and what they've been reduced to, and what can be done to shine up their tarnished images.

The E3 Diaries: 2006

2006 marked my last year attending the Electronic Entertainment Expo (at least, so far).
It also stands as a particularly special show, as it was the last of the big, glitzy events. 2007 was the year they decided to cut it down to a much smaller, less crazy (and less booth babe-y) thing, opening it up primarily to press and developers only. 2008 was supposedly better, more of a "show", but still a shadow of its former self.
Even in 2006, they were trying to get a handle on things. They had enacted new rules concerning booth babes, insisting that they be more covered up than in previous years. While this may have seemed like sacriledge to many people, in my opinion it did make booth planners more creative with their outfits. There were still hot women, of course, but now there were new guidelines that had to be followed.
Gamestop also was far more limited in how many people they could send, so rather than just emailing the corporate office and getting in, interested parties had to submit their desire to go as early as possible and explain in detail why they felt that they should get one of the coveted passes. I submitted, I got in, and I went back to LA one last time for one last huzzah.

Oddly enough, instead of the generic badge I had gotten the previous two years (that just had "participant" or "attendee" or some other basic description), I now had one emblazoned with "priority buyer". I am not, nor have I ever been, any sort of buyer for Gamestop (much less a priority one), but I will say that having such a title hanging from my neck did make people way more interested in talking to me. Especially in Kentia Hall.

I attended the 2006 show solo. My friend from Sony was attending, but had traveled with his own party, and while we occasionally crossed paths we weren't companions this time around. This was different than my previous years, as even when I was wandering the show floor myself I always had comrades somewhere around. I was able to move fast, see as much as possible, and there was nobody to meet up with or schedule around. That being said, I think I prefer to travel with somebody. Even if we went and did our own thing, as we had done quite often the first year, at the end of the day there were people to hang out and swap stories with.
It was also the only year that I stayed at an E3 shuttle hotel (the LA taxi service was out transportation in previous years). There is a particular list that the shuttle buses go to and from, and I managed to get into one of those. It was actually really nice, with a decent Chinese restaurant within walking distance (called City Wok. Insert South Park joke here). Also, hanging on the bus with people also going to and from the show is a shining example in gamer cameraderie. Business cards are exchanged, tales are shared, laughs are had, and it's actually sort of moving in a geeky kind of way.

The sacred moment was still there upon first walking into the hall on opening day, but this time it was a little different. There was nobody around me to share in this religious experience with, which only really counts for a small bit (it was still E3, after all) and as I had been there for the previous two years, I already had some semblance of a plan in my head. I knew some of what I wanted to see ahead of time, and for the most part the big booths (Nintendo, Microsoft) were in the same location each year, so I had begun to form my action strategy well before stepping onto the show floor.

2006 was the year of the Wii. The line to see Nintendo's new console wrapped around the massive room, the wait was literally hours long. It takes less time to get onto Space Mountain during vacation season than it did to get a few minutes of hands-on time with the formerly named Revolution system.
Fortunately, as a Gamestop employee (at the time, of course), we had been offered a special chance to see the machine. On the second day of the show, Nintendo closed the Wii part of the booth a couple hours early, and they allowed only Gamestop people in. That was simply amazing.

I can't go further until I share this particular, semi-related tale. I'm sure my friends would appreciate it, as they have yet to let me live it down.
While in Nintendo's Wii showing, there was a pretty blonde girl showing off a demo (that would eventually become Wii Music). Nintendo didn't subscribe to the "booth babe" mentality of scantily clad silicone girls, but instead had pretty girls wearing clothing that actually covered their bodies. The outfits were tight, but not risque, and the girls were there to show off the product and not just stand there looking hot.
Anyway, I'm standing there waiting my turn, watching someone play the demo, and casually chatting with the Nintendo girl. She then asks me if I had been to E3 the previous year, which of course I said that I had, and she stated that she remembered seeing me before. We kept on talking, and the conversation swings to the fact that she really wanted to go out and get sushi that night. She lived up in the Redmond, WA area (where Nintendo HQ is located), and looked forward to the LA trip each year so she could get better sushi than she could get back home. She mentioned some hot restaurant, the Geisha House, that she and some of the other girls planned to hit after the show. She then suggested that I meet them there and hang out.
To recap: a pretty blonde Nintendo girl asked me to come out and have sushi with her and some other Nintendo girls.
I didn't go. I went back to my hotel room, started chatting with my girlfriend on the phone, and never did follow through on the invite. I thought that going to hang out with a bunch of hot girls on LA could be seen as "wrong" where my relationship is concerned, and rationalized it by not wanting to pay for the cab and what was probably really expensive (but undoubtedly amazing) sushi.
I have yet to live this down, and probably never will. They point out that I should have gone for a variety of reasons, from "hoping to score with a Nintendo booth girl" to "could have made some valuable contacts in the industry".
Regardless of why I didn't go, and the reasons my friends (and I) feel I should have, I'm reasonably certain that someone will bring it up in my eulogy.

Moving on as quickly as possible...
2006 was pretty interesting from a game standpoint. The Xbox 360 was still within its first year of release, so Microsoft was going balls-out to show off what was coming for their machine. I played an abysmal demo of Too Human, saw a video on Gears of War, and drooled over the first teaser for Fable 2. Nintendo, of course, was showing the Wii, and Sony was all about the Playstation 3.
Even walking around the show floor, hitting the booths of random developers, you could see the next generation's system war in its early stages. Even on the handheld front, most of what was being shown was for the DS or PSP, despite the GBA still being in production at that point in time.
Everything about E3 2006 just screamed "future of gaming" more than the previous years that I had attended.

Just like the previous years, the event was a whirlwind of sound and color. Once again it was hours of bouncing from booth to booth, trying to see everything while just absorbing it all for processing later. By now I was an "experienced" E3 showgoer, weaving through the crowds and working hard to see what I wanted to see and not just get swept up in the sea of chaos. It still got overwhelming at times, and I still had to take about a week to mentally sift through everything I had seen and done and remember it in chunks to prevent my brain from melting, but through the 2006 show I felt far more confident than I had in 2004. I felt less like a kid at a candy store, a pilgrim on a religious trek, and more like I belonged there.

I had again insured that my flight time would allow me to be there for the ending of the show. and once again I bade farewell to LA and returned home to the east coast.

So that's it. Three years of E3, three amazing adventures. Hopefully I'll end up there again someday.
If nothing else, though, I finally realized a dream, and even if I never see the show floor again I still have that.

The E3 Diaries: 2005

Continuing the saga of my continuing annual adventures in Los Angeles:

After the amazing experience that was E3 2004, I knew that I needed to go back.
I also figured that things would be different. After all, now I was an experienced E3 show-goer, so that initial shock and awe that I had experienced upon first walking into the event would have come and gone the previous year.
Again through Gamestop, I got my entry into the show. This year I went with the Sony friend that I had traveled with in 2004, as well as my girlfriend at the time who was working at Radio Shack (proving that they were pretty lax on what passed for "industry" to get in). We went out to LA early, stayed at a motel on Hollywood Boulevard, and finally got to see the sights for a bit before the madness began. We were appropriately touristy, taking pictures of the Hollywood sign and looking for stars on the Walk of Fame. It was fun, relaxing, and a nice calm before the storm.

As one of my companions and I had already been to E3, we were prepared for what awaited us. We tried to plan as best we could, discussing what we wanted to see and such, but by the time we got to the convention center the giddy excitement was already trumping any rationale we may have had over breakfast.
Again we waited in line, this time being slightly different due to the amazing amount of DS Pictochatting that was going on, and again we stood with the throng of excited industry people as we waited for the doors to open.
Walking into the hall the second year was different than the first. There was still that moment of sacred reverence as the tempest of sound and glitz washed over me, still that few seconds where I had to adjust to the fact that I was standing within the walls of gaming mecca, but this time it was more like coming back to where I was meant to be. My girlfriend, though, was going through the breathless wonder I had gone through the previous year, and it was entertaining to see it played out through someone else.

2005 was also different in the sense that I had a significant other with me, with whom I was doing my best to stick close to. The third member of our party split off early to see what he wanted to see like we had done the last year (though I did see him way more than I had in 2004), but now I had a partner. It was interesting, in part because I now had someone to talk to about what we were seeing. It was also way easier to get photos taken with booth babes or whatever, because there was always someone to hold the camera.
2005 was the year Nintendo revealed The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, in a special area designed like a forest dungeon (complete with giant stalfos trying to attack people from behind cell bars), as well as Microsoft's big Xbox 360 pre-release showing. Sony was showing off the newly released (in the US) PSP, and offering teases on the Playstation 3 (including the maligned "boomerang" controller).

2005 was also the year that Star Wars: Episode III hit theaters. I had purchased tickets online before even leaving Massachusetts, and saw it in an absolutely massive theater that had chandaliers in the lobby. Not relevant to E3, aside from the fact that there were a lot of show-goers there, but cool nonetheless.

E3 2005 ended up playing out a lot like the previous year. The first day was just a wave of amazement, trying to see as much as possible. As much as I tried to stay focused, there was just so much to see that I got swept up in the waves of lights and motion. There were amazing sights, like a full sized stargate to advertise Stargate Worlds, and of course I had someone with me that had never experienced E3 who wanted to bounce around and try to take it all in.

We played 2005 much the same as we had the year before. After dinner we sat down and compared notes, worked out a game plan for the next day. We showed off swag, traded items back and forth (I have a fondness for game-related lanyards, owning probably around a hundred or so, so did my darndest to procure as many as possible), and generally relaxed and waited with anticipation for day two.

We played the next day closer to a plan, trying to see specific games or booths. It got a little tough at times, as now we had two people trying to see as much as possible, but still an amazing experience. Of course, we still took the time to hit Kentia Hall.

Given that we missed part of the final day in 2004, due to having to catch a plane, we had made sure to arrange a flight for the following morning. This allowed us to see the show all the way to the end. There isn't much fanfare to commemorate the end of the show, except for maybe a collective sigh and a much needed catching of breath. What is cool is that the booth staffs are tossing out swag with abandon, getting rid of as much as possible in order to pack up and haul as little as they can. There's nothing like giving people back home souvenirs from "the show", which saves money on buying stuff for them.

I will say that I ate better on this second trip. The first party of comrades was entirely male, so we pretty much ate like a group of guys out at a video game trade show. There were, of course, the infamous bacon wrapped hot dogs, but other than that we ate what we could when we remembered. I'm pretty sure there was a day where we existed entirely on caffeinated beverages.
In 2005, of course, there was the inclusion of a female into the group, and she felt that we needed to eat real food, so we did actually keep to some degree of nutritional balance. This isn't meant to sound sexist, but I bring it up merely to point out one of the major differences between this trip and the one before. There was still lots of caffeine, of course, but there was also actual meals. Bizarre, but true.

Thus ended the second year's trek to Los Angeles, another gaming pilgrimage come to an end.

The E3 Diaries: 2004

Ahh, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). To any gamer, it's almost like a sort of holy event. Industry folk travel there each year, an over-caffeinated pilgrimage to a mecca of light and sound. Gamers wish they were there, watching the videos and reading the articles and wondering what it's really like to walk the halls of this sacred occurrence.

I know full well, for as long as I can remember I had dreamed of going to E3. Every year I'd feel envious towards those that got to go. I'd avidly read magazines like Electronic Gaming Monthly (RIP, EGM) for every tidbit of gaming news. I'd leer... I mean, glance at the photos of the booth babes. I'd read the previews and impressions on every game they showed, laugh at some of the swag in that "I wish I had one of those" sort of ways, and absorb every shred of news I could while wishing that I could someday be a part of this religious experience.

I can now say, proudly, that I have been to E3, and can also say that I have gone three times.
I was working at Gamestop, and despite all of the horrors they may unleash upon their staff and the gaming world at large, they did offer me the opportunity to finally realize my gamer-geek dream. After all, I was now part of the industry, albeit on the fringe, but that was enough to secure access.
Obviously, I had to pay my own way to Los Angeles, but travel costs and food and such are small prices to pay for a holy pilgrimage. Plus, for the first couple of shows I had travel companions, which helped offset some of the costs.

I still remember the very first time I set foot onto the show floor. It was the 2004 show (I went to that, and 2005 and 2006), and I was with another Gamestop manager as well as a friend from Nintendo and a friend from Sony. We had arrived the day before, ended up at some hotel out by the airport, which is about a twenty minute cab ride to the convention center/ downtown LA area (but I had gone through a connection from my hospitality days to secure an amazing nightly rate, which balanced things out), and hadn't slept at all from the excitement coursing through our veins. We were up at the crack of dawn, had as much meager breakfast as our stomachs would allow, and set out onto our grand adventure.
First, we had to wait in line for our badges. It's outside, in the warm LA sun, so it's not exactly torturous, and there's a fun sort of cameraderie amongst the gamers waiting together. Once we got our badges, we then had to wait in line to get into the show itself. This was inside, but again not a horrific experience, aside from the giddy excitement building up as the clock ticked slowly closer to the moment the doors would open.
Anyway, the moment I first set foot onto the show floor remains one of the most holy experiences of my life thus far. It's also hard to describe to anyone who hasn't experienced it, much like Spock's explanation about death to Bones in Star Trek 4. Here's my best attempt, though:
E3 is a cacophony of sound. That's the first thing I noticed, even as I was stepping through the security-guarded door. Thousands of people all talking at once, the sounds of hundreds of gaming stations, music playing from different booths, all swirls together into an auditory maelstrom that you don't "hear", but more accurately it "assaults your brain". Oddly enough, though, it didn't sound like noise to me, but it just sounded... right. Exactly as I had always hoped it would sound.
Then there's the attack on your sense of sight. I had walked in right near the Nintendo booth (which was showing off the new DS handheld that year), and they had giant screens showing games and clips and stuff. There are booths crammed together, each one trying to out-dazzle their neighbors, and the end result is that there's so much more to see than your eyes can possibly process. There are giant screens flashing videos, girls and guys dressed like game characters or just barely dressed at all (mostly the girls on that one), rows upon rows of screens and system and games, statues of characters, booths designed to look like whatever game setting they're pushing (like the old west church built to house the Darkwatch video), and more people from more countries than ever thought possible. Really, at some point you just stop processing, as your brain is afraid that your eyes might explode.

My companions and I stepped through the door, E3 badges hanging proudly from lanyards around our necks, and just... stopped. We stopped short, staring at everything and nothing, hearing everything and nothing, and all at once it hit us: we were at E3. We all gasped as one, looking from one to another with a reverence a Catholic might show at the Vatican, and just absorbed the moment before diving into the madness. There were others around us as well, people we didn't know and have never seen since, also sharing their first E3 moment in the same way.
If that sounds over-dramatized, let me assure you that I have described the experience as accurately as possible.

It's pretty much impossible to see everything at E3. On our first day, my companions and I just walked around and tried to see as much as possible. At some point we wandered away from each other, occasionally crossing paths and stopping for a moment to swap quick stories or walking together for a time before splitting off again. There would be occasional text messages about something particularly amazing, as we quickly discovered that trying to talk on the phone was futile (as was having the phone on anything other than vibrate), but for the most part the first day was just us trying to take in everything.
Every booth has something to show. There are multiple halls to go to, a million games to try, hot girls posing for pictures and handing out T-shirts, and just so much to see and hear and do that your brain goes into overload and you just sort of enter a weird hyperactive trance. Seriously, it took us days to process everything we had seen and done.
We got to try the DS well before it hit store shelves. We got to play all sorts of games in various stages of completion, and watch the big announcements I had spent years before reading about in magazine. We took hundreds of pictures, stood smiling with scantily clad booth babes, and collected bags full of random swag.
By the time we got back to the hotel, we were exhausted. We wanted to go "hit the town", see what LA had to offer, but honestly we crashed as soon as we sat down and pulled the shoes off of our sore feet.

The next day was a little different, as we felt that we had gotten all of that "first day" amazement out of our system. Over breakfast, we pored over the maps of the halls, wanting to "target" specific developers and see what they had to show. We worked out meeting places and times, so we could return to the hotel as a group, and once again set out.

I'm going to go on a tangent here, a special mention for the wonder that is Kentia Hall. See, as there are so many booths and such, the show is divided up throughout a few different areas within the convention center. Nintendo and Sony are in one, Microsoft in another, and all of the other studios and developers and such are peppered throughout.
Downstairs, though, you have Kentia Hall. This is where all of the "rejects" go. Random Korean developers, fourth party accessories, studios that nobody has ever heard of and has yet to release a game... basically anybody that doesn't fall into an established category. I don't mean to confer "reject" status as an insult, either, as walking through Kentia Hall is a lot of fun.
First of all, the Classic Game Expo is down there, which is essentially a series of long tables covered with consoles and machines from all eras of gaming. Each one is designated with their name, date of release, and many of them are functional and able to be played. From classics like the NES, forefathers such as the Commodore 64, failures such as the Jaguar, if it's part of gaming's history it's there. Just walking around the tables and looking at past, maybe playing something on a machine you've never touched before, is pretty cool and well worth it for any fan of gaming history.
The people in Kentia Hall just, in a lot of ways, try harder to impress you. They don't have huge monitors showing off some jaw-dropping cinematic. They don't have a team of barely dressed strippers to lure people in, or speakers to blast some hot music to draw you over. They just have themselves, belief in their product, and the hope that they can share that hope with the world (well, with E3 showgoers).
I've always wanted to find work as a community manager/ public relations type person within a game developer. It's safe to say that, while I learned a lot from E3 in general, I learned more about the job in Kentia Hall, where you don't have glitz and flash but just personality and a desire to show off your studio's work.

OK, back on topic now.
So the second day was more about trying to see what we wanted to see. Waiting in line to see specific games, trying to score a particular piece of swag, scheduling around special guests at different booths. I waited in line about a half hour at the Bandai booth to get the autograph of the guy who created Cowboy Bebop. This is noteworthy, first because that's just cool, and second because while waiting in line my Nintendo friend kept texting me to come to the Nintendo booth. He never told me why, and I alternated between ignoring him and telling him to wait and I'd be there after waiting in line. After getting the autograph, I hurried to Nintendo's booth to find out what was so important; While he was hanging around chatting with some people he knew at the booth, who came out of one of the conference rooms but Shigeru Miyamoto! He had his picture taken with him, chatted with him for a few moments, and was trying to tell me to get my ass over there to take part in that. Of course, if he had just opened with that...
Then again, it furthers a big point about E3: you will not see everything you want, and even if you try to schedule your day to perfection you never know what could happen.

Every now and again, if possible, you try taking a split second to breath.
Mountain Dew was giving out cans of soda at every entrance, so I was soaring on caffeine through it all. The food isn't bad at the "food court" in the convention center (surprisingly decent, freshly made sushi is available), though it's generally always crowded. We went outside at one point, found a vendor with a push-cart, and experienced bacon wrapped hot dogs.
Bacon wrapped hot dogs will either repel you with the very notion, or sound like a good idea. For all of us, it was the latter, so we each ordered two. The first one was actually pretty good, though we were so hungry and hyper/tired by that point that we may not have actually "tasted" much. About halfway through our seconds, we realized that we were eating bacon wrapped hot dogs, and the novelty wore off quickly. I'm convinced that the reason I'm on cholesterol medication, five years later, can be traced back to that exact moment in time.

The second day is more about the games. On the first day, you're just trying to see as much as you can, bouncing like a pachinko ball from booth to booth. The second day you have a plan, and for the most part we stuck to our plans. I took part in a Ninja Gaiden tournament at the Tecmo booth, which sucked only because I was hoping to get into the Dead or Alive tourney instead (I had never played Ninja Gaiden, so obviously didn't do too well). On the way out I did pass Itagaki, the creator of DOA, so that was cool. More like "dodged out of the way because he was walking to the booth and talking to someone and not paying attention, expecting people to just move out of his way", actually, but still cool. He was even wearing the black leather jacket and sunglasses.
That day I played a lot of games. More than I can possibly remember all at once. I actually have a copy of the E3 DVD we were selling at the store after the event, which was made up of video from the show floor as well as trailers for various games, and I had to watch it to recall what I had seen and played.
At the end of the day we met up, went back to the hotel, and once again tried and failed to get the motivation to go see the city.

The last day is a lot quieter. Booths are in the early stages of shutting down, not trying to be obvious about it but you can see the cardboard boxes ready to be filled. A lot of people have already left, as the press conferences and big announcements have all come and gone. Flights are taking people to homes all over the world, so there are just less people on the show floor. We had a late afternoon flight, so went in the morning to soak up as much as we could before time demanded that we head to the airport. It was on this day that I got to sit down with a developer from Bioware and get a detailed hands-on demo with Jade Empire, which was pretty cool, though my friends were outside waiting impatiently because I was cutting it pretty close.

Over the course of the next several days after E3, your brain sort of leaks out information. I'm convinced that the human mind is incapable of grasping it all at once, and could actually cause a catatonic state if attempted, so instead over the course of the next week I was stopping and suddenly remembering something else I had seen or done throughout the adventure.

Next post, the next year, on what I have now decided is E3 weekend at The Grumbly Gamer.