Episode 61 General
Timecode: 7:34: An anime clip from the game Eve: The Lost One (PS 1). It shows three people opening a coffin filled with a wavy green liquid that is holding a woman inside. Is she sleeping, or dead? Probably sleeping, since dropping a mysterious red flower into the coffin seems to wake her up. The animation is beautiful.
10:00: The intro for Cy Girls (PS 2, 2004, Konami). Originally announced in 2002 as “Cool Girls”, this third-person action game was made to capitalize on Japanese action figures. The two playable characters were Aska (sic?), a Japanese kunoichi, and Ice, a gun-toting, Caucasian blonde. I played this game on a demo once, and the controls seemed rather... difficult, unlike Psi Ops The Mindgate Conspiracy (multiplatform, Midway), an awesome TPS released just a few months later. The sound effects of Ice's high heels were nice, though.
17:39: Another one of Microsoft's slick-yet-silly Xbox ads in Japan. This one, titled “Quest”, shows the green-haired heroine walking through disembodied doors of ~mystery~ while a strange green vortex swirls in the background. The doors warp her through other doors until she finds one that emits blinding light.
The problem was that none of this ads reflected the experience of the Xbox's games. This campaign, a lack of genres that Japanese gamers traditionally enjoy (like RPGs), an overabundance of genres they don't (FPSes), an overall lack of support from key Japanese developers, and a monstrously huge console all spelled doom for the system in Japan.
But a few Japanese companies did pledge some support for the Xbox, and several of those games were fairly glorious: Otogi Myth Of Demons (From Software), Phantom Dust, and Panzer Dragoon Orta (Sega), for example.
Microsoft did MUCH better getting more developers for the Xbox360, and more games from a variety of genres. In regards to the RPG deficiency, I'd say it has been thoroughly remedied.
Episode 62
3:02: A strange clip from Soulcalibur II (multiplatform, 2003) featuring some of the voice clips of Ivy, the anachronistic, dominatrix-inspired character. Like most fighting games, SCII had the feature where you could play all of a character's voice clips outside of battle. Cool, huh? Well, it also showed how odd-looking lipsync can be, when they get to Ivy's death cry at the end, and it doesn't quite seem to match the noise that the English VA made.
3:25: The animated intro to the North American version
of Magic Knight Rayearth (1998, Sega Saturn). Oh man, MKR will always have a place in my heart for being my gateway to Clamp. There were actually two MKR games, both RPGs. The first was for the Super Famicom, and some claimed its main flaw was its lax difficulty level. Working Designs translated the second game for the Saturn. Like the Lunar games, they dubbed over the original Japanese theme song into English. It's an awesome song either way, but I prefer the version from the translated anime, which was also alternatively dubbed into English. WD also added extra sound effects to the intro, which are a little distracting.
Since MKR was last game released for the Saturn in the US, it is very rare and collectible. The game was originally released in Japan in 1995, and WD released it in 1998. The reasons as to why it took so long can be found on this MobyGames page.
Episode 63
9:18: The intro for Hard Luck: Return of the Heroes (PS 2). It introduces us to the three heroes: police officer Max Broderick (190 cm, 89 kg, blood type B, age 26), tech guy Scott Winkler (179 cm, 67 kg, blood type AB, age 27), and firefighter Douglas Brantley (181 cm, 85 kg, blood type O, age 34). The cel-shaded in-game graphics shown in the intro look nicer than the CG graphics themselves.
Why haven't there been many firefighter games? There have been a few, like Firefighter F.D. 18 (PS 2, Konami, 2004), this top-down, SNES firefighting game from Human Entertainment (Clock Tower, SOS), and if an old issue of GamePro is to be believed, a strange FMV game called Dancin' Fireman!
Anyway, don't you think a firefighting game could work well with motion controls?
13:53: The animated intro to the PS 2 game based on the anime Elemental Gelade. The character designs look cute yet varied. I'd watch the series if I could, so I guess the game has done its job of selling the anime, even without me playing it.
Some of the characters have guardian spirits, all of whom are girls, who turn into weapons for them to use in battle. They seem to contrast interestingly with the people who use them; a female martial artist named Rasati has guardian named Lilia who looks incredibly fragile and shy, while the super-stoic, Bad Ass looking Voles has an adorable little girl guardian named Tille who turns into a giant hammer.
The game of course uses cel-shaded in-game graphics, and they look bright and slick. They showed plenty of gameplay and cutscenes in this episode, so they may have liked it better than most anime games.
An Incredibly Brief and Scattershot History of Anime Games
Knowing full well The Problem with Licensed Games, I tend to shy away from anime games. But I have subjected myself to some of them in the past, mainly Dragon Ball fighting games. Let's start with...
Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout: OMG, yes. Somehow, the game that would become one of the most sought-after PS 1 games in history was available for rent at my local video rental place. I didn't enjoy this game because I didn't know anything about DBGT at the time. I was excited about Dragon Ball Z, the predecessor of GT, so I was disappointed that the cast was full of mostly unfamiliar characters. No Yamcha, Krillin, Chaotzu, or Tien led to one brief and super-forgettable rental.
The critics hated the game, but what about the fanboys? As of this writing, Amazon.com reviews have left the game with an average of... four out of five stars.
Dragon Ball Z Budokai 1: This game was amazing for its time. The graphics were a little crude, but it was a huge thrill seeing DB characters in 3D cutscenes that accurately recreated important scenes from the show. Unfortunately, the game stopped at the Cell Saga. Just like Dragon Ball Z Kai! T.T
Dragon Ball Z Budokai 2: This game covered the whole of the DBZ series and received a sexy new cel-shaded paint job. Unfortunately, the board game-esque story mode progression could be more tedious than the Frieza Saga.
Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi: This game's fighting engine was a massive improvement on the Budokai series. It embraced the third dimension, allowing players to walk and even fly around the stages. The story mode was nice, but not overbearing. There were also some fun bonus modes. Overall, my favorite DB game ever.
Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 2: This game was ridonkulous. It covered every battle in DBZ and GT and featured many characters that had never been in a video game before. Another nice game, and the devotion to the series' spirit is nice, but the story mode is very, very long, so if you want to beat the game, let alone get 100% Completion, you had better be really into it.
Dragon Ball Z Burst Limit: The first official seventh-gen DBZ game (DBZBT 2 and 3 are just PS 2 ports to the Wii), it obviously receives a huge boost to graphics, but lacks the dedication to the story mode that earlier games had, doing the mediocre fighting engine no favors.
Macross VF-X 2: The sequel to an earlier Macross game, and apparently, even Bandai was too embarrassed by the game to actually release the NA version after they put out the demo. So if you have the demo, it's probably a collectible! The game was bad because it was hard to figure out what you were doing, and why. Incomprehensible gameplay. No amount of fighter plane transformations could save that.
Square Enix's Fullmetal Alchemist games: These were okay PS 2 action RPGs. The second one was a little better, and had improved, cel-shaded graphics.
Ghost In The Shell: A unique third-person actioner for the PS 1. It was inspired more by the original, more lighthearted manga instead of the anime movies and series. In this game, the player assumed the role of a rookie at Japan's Public Security Section 9 who was taught to pilot a charming Fuchikoma tank. The tank could strafe and climb all around the environments, giving the game a unique feel. The game also featured several animated FMVs by Production IG, arguably the game's highlight.
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