Cinematech Episode 214: “Afterglow”
An ep devoted to some of the other games featured at E3 2005. The only thing that really interests me about this ep is...
Timecode: 9:31: Clips
from the canceled Kirby game for the Nintendo GameCube, called Kirby Advenutre. This footage features some new powerups and hats for Kirby, such as a transparent, aquatic hat, probably for a water ability, which did show up in Kirbys Return To Dreamland, and a co-op mode. This game appears to have largely been the basis for the utterly fabulous Kirbys Return To Dreamland (Wii, 2011), which was a more traditional Kirby game after Kirby's Epic Yarn (Wii, 2011).
Episode 217: “Revenge of Afterglow”
Yet another ep showing off some of the games featured at E3 '05.
11:58: A trailer for Viewtiful Joe: VFX Battle, a game for the GameCube and PS2 focused more on multiplayer than the other games in the Viewtiful Joe series. This trailer features some brief clips from the anime based on Viewtiful Joe, which looked pretty cute and translated the games' unique, darkly-shaded style to anime form. Mainly, I mentioned this game because I really like the song in the trailer.
15:39: “Objection!” A trailer for the first Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney adventure game to be released officially in North America. This game was a remake of the first AA game originally made for the Game Boy Advance and released in 2001 in Japan. Unlike the original GBA version, Capcom actually brought the DS version over to North America. The trailer introduces such characters as...
Phoenix Wright, one tough lawyer; Maya Fey, not your average “medium”; Miles Edgeworth, the dapper prosecutor ; and Mia Fey, Phoenix's girlfriend and Maya's older sister, who was murdered but stays around Phoenix and Maya as a spirit to help them in their cases. Maya channels her when she needs to help Phoenix more directly.
“The law has never been more fun!” the trailer declares.
Another fun thing about the AA series is how the names are translated from their original Japanese. Capcom's translators try their hardest to pay homage to the punny names that the characters have in the original Japanese version.
16:56: Hello Kitty: Roller Rescue, a GameCube game starring Hello Kitty, who dons a pair of roller skates to rescue her friends from evil robots! If you're a fan of Sanrio's other characters, you will recognize several of her friends in this game.
18:21: A trailer for... not a game, but the full-length CG movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. After the massive failure of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Square Enix eventually decided to make a new CG movie based off of one of the preexisting Final Fantasy games, and possibly the most popular and beloved one. The basic plot had a creepy trio of villains who kidnap children infected with "Geostigma". Geostigma was a disease that affected people who came into contact with the Lifestream at the end of Final Fantasy VII. People became infected because some of the cells of "Jenova", the calamity that crashed into the planet and tried to destroy it in the past, tainted the Lifestream. The villains kidnapped children afflicted with Geostigma in order to perform a "Reunion" that would bring their "brother" Sephiroth, a clone of Jenova, back to life.
This escalates into a big conflict that takes up most of the end of the movie. All of Cloud's friends get involved, and I do mean all, along with some former enemies, making for quite a spectacle. I enjoyed the movie because it was nostalgic, had beautiful graphics, and had some of the heart that Final Fantasy VII was known for. I would say it's one of the best video game-based movies of all time, and due in large part to the involvement of the company responsible for the original game. Get boned, Hollywood!
Episode 221: “Tetsuya Mizuguchi”
An ep featuring the games of Mizuguchi, founder of Q Entertainment, whose newest game at the time was Meteos, an incredible puzzle game for the Nintendo DS. It was actually my first favorite DS game. I didn't know for years after the game's release that it was designed by Masahiro Sakurai, who also created Kirby.
In one of his interviews, he explained that Meteos was partially inspired by 24 and its use of multiple frames showing events at the same time. He also said that one of the games that inspired Meteos was Missile Command. I can see some of that influence in Meteos.
15:11: The famous and gorgeous tech demo from Square that recreated the intro of FFVII with real time PS3 graphics. It's very pretty and runs at a high frame rate, probably higher than an actual FFVII remake on the PS3 would run as a game.
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