Complete Nerd-Stick

That fine old game controller, the joystick, seems to be increasingly uncommon amongst the general gaming population and yet there's a pretty big sub-market for high-end and even custom versions.

Ever since I started playing on home consoles, I've had to buy a joystick for use as a controller. The need stems from all the arcade playing I used to do before the NES resuscitated the console market from the post-Atari days. Joysticks... really crappy ones... were the standard on the old Atari 2600, the most popular home machine before the NES. But I didn't get into the 2600 too much... or the Colecovision, or the Intellivision, or the Atari 5200. My video game time was spent on quarter munchers.

There were some different input devices scattered around the arcades. All-button layouts for a lot of games. A steering wheel for any driving game. A spin knob for Tempest. A trackball for Centipede. There were cool custom devices like the the periscopes for Battlezone or Sea Wolf. But mostly it was a little knob or bat-shaped stick jutting up from the panel and with it you moved Pac-man around the maze or alternately blasted aliens and rescued humans in Defender. It was a simple, durable way to translate directional inputs, leaving the other hand free to push whatever buttons were needed.

When the Nintendo Entertainment System came out, I got the little brick 'd-pads' just like everyone else. I wasn't TOTALLY unfamiliar with the concept because years before I'd had a friend with an Intellivision. I'm not sure why the Intellivision pads are considered so awesome now. Back in the day I hated them so much I wanted to jam them up a stray dog's butt and then shoot the dog, hoping the controller got crushed in the death throes. The NES pads were better (to me) but it wasn't even a week later that I tracked down a Toys 'R' Us carrying official Nintendo joysticks. And these things were pretty damn awesome at the time. MILES better than the Atari 2600 stock versions. They worked with every game and made every game better. I think the only NES games I didn't use them for was Pinbot and other pinball simulators because it was unnatural to move a stick for the left flipper and push a button for the right. With the d-pad you could 'press a button' for both flippers to make it much more like actual pinball.

When I upgraded to a Genesis, there were no joysticks immediately available. I was pretty frantic. There had to BE joysticks released, since I was not a particularly early adopter of the console, but it was like a month or two before I could lay my hands on some. So before that happened I took a fairly heavyweight screw and drove it right into the middle of the directional pad on the Genesis controller. It stuck up about an inch, and it made all the difference in the world. It was not super comfortable... I got a pretty sore thumb nudging the screw around instead of cradling a joystick in the hand as I normally would... but it was a workaround that kept me from dying a bazillion times trying to learn how to get along with a d-pad. And when I finally did get the real joysticks, again my enjoyment of the console skyrocketed. And these were some goshdamn cool-looking pieces of hardware too, all-black with lights above the buttons. Both these and the NES sticks had turbofire buttons, which really helped considering that, as cool as the joysticks were, their base size and button placement didn't allow me to hammer the fire controls with anything like the speed and stamina I could manage in arcades.

So in the years since, every time I've bought a new game console I've immediately gotten a joystick (or two) to go with it. I don't use them for every game any more. When Sega released the analog pad for Sega Nights on the Saturn, I finally started using the type of analog thumbstick controller that everyone else had been using for months on their Playstations (the predecessor to the dual shock controllers that are synonymous with Sony now). The thumbstick was kind of like the old screw I put in my Genesis pad, only a lot more comfortable. Hours spent on the Dreamcast (bought after the Saturn, I skipped the PS1 for awhile) made me finally tow the line and become comfortable with a non-joystick.

The thumbtick based analog controller is now the standard. Even the unconventional wiimote has a thumbstick on its nunchuck accessory.

Except there are still certain types of games that absolutely suck balls on a regular controller. The games that still adhere to oldest (some would say *shudder* 'most retro') game mechanics.... namely 2D fighting games and 2D shooters. I'd argue that 2D platforming games and beat 'em up/beltscroll fighters are also WAY better with a stick, but you can at least play them competently on a pad. I understand there are gamers who can play shooters and fighters very well on a standard controller but I don't know how they do it, especially the ever-present-in-fighting-game shoryuken/dragon punch motion.

So, uh, guess what kind of games I played to death in the arcades AND on home consoles. Yep. 2D fighters, shooters, and platforming games.

My kids are totally unfamiliar with joysticks. By the time my oldest could even muster interest in video games, the PS2 was the dominant machine. So all they've ever really known is dual shock controllers and their antecedents. I have the pads to all my old consoles, so if they feel like jumping in the wayback machine and play some games on the Genesis, the d-pad (screw now removed) is pretty similar to the cross-pad on their Nintendo portables. But when I'm playing... or when I drag a joystick out for a specific game on a newer system, you'd think I was bringing a musket to a drug war. Much eye-rolling and snorting is sure to ensue. It isn't enough that I like those stone-age style games... and that includes RECENT shooters or fighters like Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu or Super Street Fighter IV... I have to drag out the stone axes and flint arrows with which to play them.

The derision reached something of a crescendo recently when I decided to upgrade my PS2 and Xbox 360 joysticks. I don't mean upgrade as in purchase better ones... I mean upgrade as in replacing parts. This is a level of fanatic nerd-ery the likes of which my daughter thought she'd never see me display in my home. I think she'd have been less affected if I'd cosplayed Evangelion pilot Ayanami Rei at an anime convention. My son, however, was intrigued. He has always been something of a 'fiddler'. He loves buidling models, taking stuff apart, or messing with Legos. In racing games he spends more time playing with color schemes and decals for his cars then he does on the actual driving. These joysticks are big too, Hori Real Arcade Pro models, so the idea of cracking them open and working on the guts was like asking him to help me work on real-life automobiles. I asked him to second 'the surgery' on one stick and my daughter to help me with the other. I wasn't trying to foment love for the joysticks amongst my children, I just thought this would be a cool and very different activity for us to bond over. And despite the utter nerd-ity of the project, my daughter also wanted to get in on it. Just to 'help me do this correctly' of course.

The Japanese company Hori makes a line of controllers for all makes of video game consoles, but they have a particular rep (and cult following) for their higher-end line of joysticks. These frequently use the same parts as the candy cabinet style arcade machines still found in Japan. In the case of the two sticks under discussion, both have Sanwa JLF sticks, the most frequent model found on fighters, and Hori's knock-offs of Sanwa buttons.

The 'need' to do this upgrade has been borne out of my frustration playing Super Street Fighter IV. It has been quite a while since I've put any emphasis on getting good at a 2D fighting game, but the new SSFIV is pretty awesome. However it is the first game of its genre that I've tried playing on the Xbox 360. I haven't done BlazBlue or any of the HD Capcom remakes on the Xbox Live service. I might be a little rusty, sure.

I've never really had problems executing any of the command motions in any previous fighting games, from any company on any system. But wow, I am having the devil's own time executing commands on this game, particularly the double fireball motion needed for most supers and ultras. My understanding is that the timing window to execute these commands is very forgiving. I've had no issues managing the same mechanics in various Street Fighter III iterations on other platforms, which is supposedly much more strict. I *think* my problem is the size of the 'throw' on the HRAP (Hori Real Arcade Pro) stick that I use on the 360. I think the time it takes to do the full range of motions goes outside even the timing window because the stick has to move very far in order to register each direction/point. I think the actual proper points the stick needs to hit are not quite all the way to the outside of the stick's range of motion... so in effect the map to get out the command is kind of smaller than the area the joystick moves... and I'm too old and impatient to sit there and fuck with this and learn it when all other fighting games I have DON'T have this 'placement' problem.

Because I play a lot of Cave shooters, small precise movements of the joystick are a must. Online the consensus seems to be that the short throw of the standard Seimitsu brand arcade joysticks are the best for these sorts of games. Short throw equals quick changes in direction... EXACTLY what seems to be required to overcome my problem with SSFIV. It appears the distance the Seimitsu sticks need to travel to engage each direction is smaller than the Sanwa sticks that my HRAP comes with. My play with Cave shooters could stand improvement but was never so bad that I felt like spending the money to upgrade to Seimitsu parts. But being unable to access a primary mechanic in SSFIV pushed me over the edge. My abilty to tap buttons quickly has never been a problem (my kids ALWAYS hand controllers to me for button mashing sections of games), but I figured I'd replace the Hori buttons with less-mushy Seimitsu versions as well.

The kids helped me with the modifications... small hands equals useful... and I'm really pleased with how they've turned out so far. I say so far because I actually got the wrong replacement stick for the Xbox 360 HRAP. From the outside the two models (HRAP 2.0 for the PS2, HRAP EX for the Xbox 360) look really similar apart from the colors, but actually the PS2 stick uses an easy slip-on molex connector for the wiring, where the Xbox 360 version is soldered. Which I didn't know. Seimitsu makes replacements in both slip-on (LS-32-01) and soldered (LS-32), but the soldered one ain't here yet.

The finished PS2 HRAP is pictured above. The original had all bright red buttons and a bright red ball top to the stick itself. I changed the button colors to match the color coding of buttons on stock Sony controllers. It makes the stick gaudier (though not brighter actually), but I then put black buttons corresponding to the controller triggers and a black ball top all to compensate for the color riot. Having the correct colors on there was done in the first place because onscreen prompts or quick time events can get confusing when your buttons are all red AND not placed the same way they are on the pad. I've also got a Dreamcast and an Xbox 360 with their own button color schemes. I'm not even going to try to memorise them all.

I'm not having fighting game troubles with the PS2, but I thought I'd give the new Seimitsu stick a whirl with one just the same. There is a noticeable difference in the ease with which the moves come out for me. The stick is a bit stiffer, and it has a smaller dead zone (the amount of travel the stick can move from center before engaging a direction). So subtler motions net the same effect as the unmodified stick. If my impression holds true, this should fix my problem playing SSFIV when I can get THAT stick changed out... hopefully next week. We've already done the 360's buttons.

Perversely, and probably temporarily, this little project has gotten my son all interested in joystick-necessary games. Up to this point, he hated almost all 2D fighters (doesn't like command motion inputs) and was indifferent to shooters and platformers. Now all of a sudden Gradius V and Thunder Force VI on the PS2 are hot commodities. And of course he wants his own joystick. If this interest holds up and we wind up having to get him one or two, the irony will be that I would probably give him the ones we've modified ourselves and I'd just get myself new HRAPs... but this time I'd get some specials that already come with Seimitsu parts (like the HRAP EX-SE). Modding these was fun, but I did it mostly because it was less expensive than buying new joysticks. If we're going to get new ones anyway, might as well get 'em already done. Unlike the kid, I'd rather spend the time playing than fiddling.

Tastefully Distasteful

I have to admit that despite the incredibly unpleasant subject matter in the film The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, director Asia Argentor (yes, THAT Asia Argento) actually handled the most lurid aspects of the story with some decorum. That doesn't really lessen the punch (or shock value) but it did bump the film up into the watchable category for me... though this is really the sort of movie you watch to make you feel good about your own life and feel blessed if you had decent parents.

Two other reasons to watch: See what those wacky Disney Channel twins the Sprouse brothers got up to before becoming family friendly. When other kids try to break away from their Disney image AFTER they get older... doing something edgy or adult, the Sprouse twins manage to do it big-time while they're little before they even go to work for the Mouse. Also if you are unfamiliar with the JT Leroy controversy, this films extras give a lot of insight into why it was a big deal to some people. The real JT, Laura Albert, went to A LOT of trouble to put up a smokescreen. I guess she's actually the 'Speedie' hanger-on that you see for five seconds.

Before Steroids Got Such a Bad Rap

In the 80s we had a surfeit of action films starring brutish, muscleheads that carried big guns and spouted one-liners. Think Rambo, Commando, any Dolph or Jean-Claude movie. These movies are still remembered and exert a fair amount of influence on the summer blockbusters of today.

In the 90s, following the success of Doom, video gamers had a bounty of games letting them relive all the 'good parts' (ie the violence) of those testosterone flicks through the running, bouncing wonder of the first person shooter or FPS, though at that time, the term 'corridor shooter' was typical. As the environments opened up, 'corridor shooter' dropped from common usage.

These days the genre is extremely popular. As of this writing my Xbox 360 dashboard is dominated by announcements and advertisements for gobs of these things. At times it seems like there's nothing else getting released. Already past, but still showing ads for downloadable add-ons, Halo: Reach, Call of Duty: Black Ops and Borderlands. Just released Homefront. Coming soon: Bulletstorm, Crysis 2, and Brink. I know floaty-arm games are popular, but jumpin' Jeebus!

I like me some floaty-arm game, don't get me wrong. I'm just not devoted to them. As time has ground on and the genre has evolved, simply running and gunning like we did in the old days through Doom, Quake, Powerslave and Duke Nukem has been replaced by 'realistic' missions, level designs grounded in reality, and (game-)logical methods of accounting for player protection and health. The original Serious Sam games for PC and Xbox (before the Xbox 360) don't actually hail from the TRUE old days but they were designed to get back to the basic spirit in a genre that was (and is) getting bogged down in being too serious (ha) and reality-based to be fun all the time. Serious Sam HD games are just high definition remakes. The same retro-styled games but re-tooled for the giant flatscreens we all play on now.

For the most part, I liked being reminded of how it was. Weird enemies (and Sam's are weirder than most) throwing themselves at you. No complicated AI. Nothing about enemy grunts attempting to use cover or roll away from grenades. These alien scum just stand and shoot, moving only to get the clear shot or throwing themselves at you if they aren't armed with ranged weapons. They pop up out of thin air, frequently just as you've grabbed a box of ammo or a health up. This leads frequently to being startled and panic-firing whatever happens to be armed at the moment. Awesome. Constantly on edge. You have a lot of ammo lying around but there were times when the game threw so many enemies that I found myself rationing... just so I'd have some on hand for situations that really required specific guns. It isn't logical for health packs, armor, ammo and guns to be lying around either, but that's how it worked in the time before Master Chief-style regenerating shields or Battlefield Bad Company's (retarded) adrenalin shot.

Rant tangent: Honestly. The Bad Company health mechanic is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. You LITERALLY walk around with a permanent health pack, available at a button press. On the one hand, that would seem to make the game too easy, and I think early on it does. But as I understand it, later you'll be pushing that thing into your chest constantly. Bad Company might be finely tuned for balance, I don't know, but it just FEELS to me that having a method like that is just an excuse to not have to tune the enemies and stages very much. In Serious Sam there was something of a balance between just enough enemies to pose a challenge before you had another health-up available. If you picked a higher difficulty then there was a seesaw effect of more/harder enemies versus fewer/smaller health-ups. If someone has a health-up always on tap, it seems like a lot of this balance is lost... never mind that continually jamming a fucking great needle in your chest for instant life extension is hardly more realistic than enemy lairs having first aid kits strewn about the place.

But Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter was pretty damn fun. It was simple, over-the-top, and cheesy in just the right way. Sam spouts one-liners right from the Arnie playbook, though the voice actor has a really guttural voice, like he's speaking from a broken-glass shredded throat. The aliens are really strange, but the game plays them straight, complete with datafiles that matter-of-factly give background on scorpion-centaurs with chainguns, or headless humanoids running around with Wile E. Coyote bombs. One of the few concessions Serious Sam gives to the new gaming mentality is the ability to instantly save at any second. In the old days you had to reach checkpoints, or in some brutal cases the end of an entire level before you were given the opportunity to save. In SSHD it is almost too easy. I found once or twice, in an almost convulsive fit at some surprise, that I'd saved at a really bad place, and had to struggle to extricate myself from that frozen moment right in front of an enemy missile or flailing above a spike pit. I'd like to say insta-save is total bullshit and real men don't need 'em. But I was pretty grateful for it most of the time. There really were some serious frustrations in the old days when I had to restart an entire level, and play through it over and over again. That shit works fine on some arcade games like fighters or STGs, but on an FPS it can be beyond monotonous. These games are not thirty minute affairs from start to finish. Each level can be pretty long. And frankly, as an older dude and a parent I just don't have time to spend perfecting every room and hallway.

So the concession to today's pussy gamer was actually welcome. However, a little over halfway through the game I started to remember just why FPS games have moved away from this old model in other aspects too. I don't mind games being a bit repetitive. Almost all games and game genres suffer from this. But the basic style of the environment in Serious Sam, like Doom and Quake before it, never really changes. It is always Egypt, Egypt, Egypt. And while that might seem like a pretty unusual environment for an FPS, too much of a good thing gets old. And I happen to have played through Powerslave on the Saturn which is ALSO an Egypt-themed FPS, though it had a lot more variety to it.

Then there is enormous repetition in the enemies. By the time you've played a couple of hours, you've seen about all the enemies you are going to. From that point on it is just different combinations of the same grunts thrown at you over and over. Even if the game had no more enemies than it does (twenty I think), if it had spread them out a bit more over the course of the whole game it'd have been more appealing. I kept waiting for some new badass around every corner, or at the beginning of each new level... and he never showed up.

And bosses are kind of a fixture for video games in general. Most puzzle games don't have them. Rhythm games don't have them. Racing games used to not have them, but a lot of racers have narratives now, so a boss driver isn't all that uncommon these days. Sports games based on real leagues don't have them... and uh, neither does Serious Sam.

Here is a game that absolutely REVELS in bizarre creature design, and the designers took no opportunity really to go all-out and just wow the player with some big motherfucker of an alien/weapon hybrid? What the hell? As I got to the end of each level, at first I was thinking 'okay here we go' expecting to be tested, and have to find some new inventive way to use my weapons or my dodging skills. Nope. Usually just a big room with a horde of grunts and then a quick cutscene of Sam running up to grab the item-of-the-level. Bosses are NOT a new video game convention. And there ARE games where it'd be stupid to include them. But this just feels like a huge missed opportunity. The irony is that there are two bosses and both of them are really huge and epic. Did they just run out of development money? No, thinking back on it... A LOT of those old FPS games didn't have bosses. But hell, I just played the new Wolfenstein game and it managed a few boss fights from occult-obssessed Nazis. Surely invading aliens with a penchant for grafting weapons onto corpses could've managed to do at least as well.

The enemies teleporting in, especially as I touched an item in a room kinda wore thin after a while too. It made the game tense, but when they'd teleport behind you, especially in a room you'd already 'cleared', that went from tense to annoying. The game frequently generated enemies up in high places that had a clear shot at me, but that would take precious minutes to search out and destroy. And when you're getting shot (or stabbed, or punched) the game, like many old corridor shooters, gives you no indication which direction it's coming from. These sorts of things; popup enemies or difficult-to-trace damage make the game more challenging, but they also feel sort of cheap. Like they are substitutes for more substantially thought-out challenges. In the old days, these difficult mechanics existed because the genre was nascent. There wasn't money, knowledge, or time to NOT have these things. Now that FPS have developed out of these old tropes it is odd to experience them again. I know Serious Sam, whose original version is still relatively new, is determinedly looking back at games like Quake. It's gibs instead of ragdoll physics for Sam. I just can't believe I'm actually finding myself appreciative of the mollycoddling and over-complexifying (I'm trademarking that word by the way) in modern FPS games.

We played and loved those old games because that's all there was. None of us knew any better. I still enjoyed most of Serious Sam HD: TFE. I particularly dug giving my kid endless shit about playing it on easy, but frankly he just didn't want to die as much as he saw was happening with me. As it turns out, the step down from Normal to Easy is a huge one. Easy is wwaaayyyy fucking easy. I think my son died three times in the entire game. And he has very little FPS experience, let alone with this older, balls-to-barbed-wire style represented here.

I'd still recommend Sam. It is pretty enough to not put newer gamers off on the graphics... because, well they're new... and it certainly makes a different play experience from the Call of Duty episode of the trimester. Looking at Bulletstorm or the new Duke Nukem (finally!) it isn't like tongue-in-cheek or bizarre FPS games are dead, but these games will probably not bend you over your cell cot like Serious Sam does.

Please note this post contains a lot of hyperbole and simplification. It isn't my intent to provide a thorough and accurate history of FPS games. I KNOW there have been exceptions and exemptions to almost every generalisation I made up there. Tough shit. I'm just framing my emotions upon playing Serious Sam.

À l'intérieur

Another notch in the gun for watching films from the so-called New French Extremity, and this one is a keeper, though that's kind of a dubious, guilt-inducing admission. Inside (À l'intérieur in French), made by a tag-team directing duo (similar to the Wachowski brothers) is not only cringe-inducing because of the subject matter, but severely creepy and scary... moreso than most any film I've seen recently apart from Martyrs, another film associated with the NFE.

The New French Extremity (not so new anymore) is a sort of 'trend' mock-echoing the French New Wave cinema of the middle 20th century. Recent French and French-speaking directors (there are some Belgian and Canadian films that fall under the envelope) have been pushing the envelope in regards to subject matter and depiction, and usually pushing audience hot button when they go too far with sex and/or violence. Although no genre is necessarily excluded from the NFE, horror films and dark dramas tend to dominate.

Viewers attracted to these films not only find directors pushing into directions no Hollywood (or even most independent) filmmaker would go, but they contain a sensibility (how very Frahnch) in how the narratives are developed that is startling and refreshing at its best, confusing or pretentious at its worst.... just like the New Wave back in the 50s. NFE films tend to be low-budget, small cast affairs, but usually shot really well or if shot badly... at least done so with intent. The stories on paper read like hundreds of other films, common plots done to death. In the horror films I gravitate to, abduction of a man/woman/couple by a band of subhumans is a frequent script. BUT. There is often a bleak, nihilistic, or dramatic approach that sets these films apart. Not plot twists so much, as directions taken that skew genre conventions. What 'good' filmmaking should be all about. Inside is a perfect example.

Inside is 'basically' about a pregnant girl who is the victim of a home invasion. And the invader wants her baby. Straight out of her womb.

Though the topic tragically comes into the headlines in real life sometimes, this is a violation that most filmmakers won't touch... or at least won't make the fulcrum of their film. Even if they DID make a movie about this (and a USA remake of Inside IS rumored now) nothing I have ever seen in American cinema makes me think it would be handled nearly as (excruciatingly) well. The fact that I have kids myself never even entered my mind while I was watching this. What the filmmakers did so well, was highlight the incredible vulnerability that not only the child has, but that the mother feels. And the portrayal didn't make her particularly weak or incapable of looking to her own defense. Beatrice Dalle, the interloper actress, gets my vote as perhaps the creepiest, most believable psycho-lady in years, maybe forever. My understanding from the extras on the DVD, is that the writer/directors did NOT have Beatrice's character defined so specifically, but Beatrice brought a bunch of ideas and they let her run with it. And she is a tour de force.

And wherever you might be afraid a movie like this might go... this one goes there. So many times with horror movies... or any film with shocking content promised... expectations just can't be met. This is one of those movies where its as bad or worse than you imagine. And that isn't just owing to the violence (which is extreme, borderline exaggerated) but the choices made... lighting, sound, music, all of it. Everything about the film is focused like a laser on wringing the most tension out of the plot.

And it never feels forced, at least not to me. There is a reason for everything. All plot developments follow right along. Ever wonder why no one thinks to call the cops in these movies? She does call them. They even believe her. They even send cops up to her door to check on her. They even figure out someone is in there with her. The movie is short, with no footage wasted for extraneous development. There IS character development, particularly with Allyson Paradis' character, the pregnant girl. She is the survivor of a car accident that killed her husband. She is alone and depressed, and not sure how she can be a mother to the child. She is played as a woman who has run out of tears, but not a simple filmic emo stereotype, and her quiet masks her real feelings for the baby to everyone around her. She doesn't 'say' any of this. There's no exposition really.

Like a lot of the films I discuss in this blog, this one is difficult to recommend. It is a really good film of its type. Hell, even the crappier films of the NFE that I've watched are at least interesting (I'm looking at you High Tension). The tears and difficulty in dealing with this subject matter were readily apparent behind the scenes. It isn't awful in the same sense Irreversible is because despite the horrific topic, forced caesarian abductions are not common. They aren't a tragedy played out every day like rape is. And weirdly, there IS a scintilla of sympathy on tap for the invader-lady in Inside. The fact that this film can be as intense and awful as it is, and still manage that, is probably the highest praise I can give it.

Manga Trumps Film Again

Watched Shinobi: Heart Under Blade. It is not a bad movie, with some aspects like the cinematography and visual effects particularly noteworthy. That it is shot beautifully is not unusual for a Japanese film, but the CG and wire effects used to show off the ninja superpowers, while not up the level of high-buck Hollywood films, is way better than most things I've seen about super-powered martial arts coming out of Hong Kong. This film almost completely eliminates the 'floatiness' of wire-fighting.

However it doesn't hold a candle to the manga version of the story, released in the USA as Basilisk. The whole thing actually originated as a novel, The Koga Ninja Scroll, but I have not read it. My understanding is that both film and manga depart rather a lot from the source material. While the film does read on paper as having the same plot as the comic, the comic is just a more spectacular piece all around.

I had a discussion not too long ago with the manager of our local comic shop about how comics were dying off. Or at the very least, about to hit a huge downturn. His point was that with all the different distractions and pastimes available to kids (and adults) these days, comics just get lost in the shuffle. He felt kids from this point on would STILL find the great stories of the heroes and characters we grew up with in the comics, but that they would know them as TV and movie heroes predominantly. So many more people have probably seen the Iron Man films than have ever cracked open an Iron Man comic book.

I don't think comics, manga, or graphic novels will ever go away. I think they may have to die down from the huge levels of excessive publishing that is still evident in Barnes & Noble and my local comic shop. In relating information about comic book-originated characters to my own kids I really work to make sure they understand where these things all come from.... but it is REALLY difficult to show any advantages to comics over movies or video games. Comics are, by and large, unnecessary to them.

Despite this my kids ARE getting into some comics, manga specifically. Japanese comics have the benefit of being finite.... and having disposable characters. They don't play by the same rules. Most of them tend to be auteur-driven and the creator has an end in sight for his or her story. Manga can be really long-running, but the characters don't run through dozens of writers and artists all of whom have their own ideas about how things should go... or a big company keeping them within the rigors of the house universe. There are tons of American, British, and European graphic novels that break the endless superhero mold, but they don't seem to feature the same iconic (read fan attractive) characters that most manga do. And it is much easier to get started on a manga. Want to read Batman? Where do you frickin' start? Like the Avengers cartoon and want to get more from the comics? Good luck figuring that out. There's the Avengers, New Avengers, Dark Avengers, Ultimate Avengers. Fucking hell. I know a lot about the Avengers, but even I get totally lost. I flip through a couple of books every now and then just to feel like I'm keeping up with the major plot points, but it is all so convoluted... and really it always has been, I just didn't have so much to the rest of my life.

Pan and Scan Bullcrap

I recently got Hideo Gosha's mid-70s jidaigeki (samurai action drama) Bandits Versus Samurai Squadron sent to me through NetFlix. It was spread over two discs and delayed quite awhile from its original place in my queue.

Finally getting to see this I was supremely disappointed in the transfer on the DVD. It's a legit copy, but from a Hong Kong distributor, and not one of the big ones like Tai Seng. Long before widescreen became the norm here in the USA, Asian distributors often had it as standard on their VHS tapes and later on laserdisc and DVD. It was just easier. Pan and scan requires you zoom in on the widescreen picture and then move the 'camera' around seeking to keep (whatever the operator feels is) the focal point of the action centered. With widescreen you just let the image roll.

So I expected an HK firm to have a crap master. Dark, grainy, or blurry. They aren't going to hit up original studio Shochiku in Japan for a superior transfer. But the pan and scan thing was just unexpected. The film starts out brutal and bloody but then has a pretty long central section where they are introducing characters left and right, and generally raising plot points that are only partway explained and really leave the viewer scratching their head. But sticking through this, the last hour or so is pretty awesome. Or it would've been if I could have seen what was going on.

There are plot twists at the end, taking the movie in a completely unforeseen, but welcome direction... shot through with the gritty sword battles that Gosha typically showcases in his films. He has this way of filming the fights so the blood flows in a convincing fashion (in real time, not in some post-slice closeup) and even the scenery gets cut too, as part of choreography shot in long takes. Included in the climax might just be the longest continuous duel I've seen in a samurai film. And it was still really believable. Samurai film duels are shockingly short compared to most martial arts portrayals in movies. Gosha's fights aren't nearly as stylised as a lot of jidaigeki directors either. There were a few closeups (clashes and grapples) where they are using really sharp goshdamn swords that had me rather tense. I saw enough in the murk of this shitty copy to at least get that much out of it.

I've seen some footage on the web showing this film in a much brighter fashion in widescreen. Even if THAT copy isn't subtitled like mine was, it'd probably be worth me tracking it down. I'm a huge fan of Hideo Gosha and I'm glad I watched this little-seen film of his... but I still feel like I missed a lot! If I was recommending films of his to track down, I'd probably go first to Goyokin or Tenchu.

Game Of The Year 2010

Looks like alot of people online... at least in the dungeons where I travel... thought 2010 was a crappy year for games. I didn't find that to be the case personally. I'm not super-big on playing new games *just* as they come out, frequently splitting my time with games for older consoles or trying to play catch-up on my backlog.

Still and all, there were a lot of new first-run games that I bought and I enjoyed nearly all of them a great deal. Of particular note: Ketsui, Vanquish, Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu, Super Street Fighter IV, Limbo. All top tier games I've spent a lot of time with. Other notables that aren't really my thing, but that I've dorked around with and feel are really damn decent: Epic Mickey, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Halo: Reach, Super Meat Boy.

I spent a lot of time in older games like Okami, Brutal Legend, Wolfenstein, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, Battle Garegga... easily as much or more than I did new games, so I might not be the best judge of the best game in a year of its release. There's so much I didn't get to. I probably should rename this (dubiously distinctive) award 'Game I Had The Most Fun Playing 2010' so that I could cast a wider net for titles that were more representative of my time. But that doesn't roll of the tongue or type quite as easily as Game Of The Year. So I'll stick with GOTY and do the traditional thing everyone else does and stick to just the year's releases.

This was a really good year for Cave fans (and a lot of general STG fans) with all the releases from that publisher. And I gotta say Ketsui and Daifukkatsu really impressed me. I still play both games frequently. Daifukkatsu isn't actually that old, but that I still need to give Ketsui 'one more go' months and months after its release is saying something. My love for Vanquish is the subject of a lot pedantry on this 'blog. It is the Xbox 360 game I am closest to getting all achievements for... and I have no real interest in achievements as a whole.

However, Game Of The Year for 2010 was undoubtedly Sin and Punishment: Star Successor for the Nintendo Wii. While I spend more time on my Xbox 360 (and probably my Sega Saturn) than I do the Wii, the little white box once again (second year in a row) comes up with that one game that leaps to the top. And once again it is a game with firm roots in a venerable arcade style of gaming. Where Muramasa last year was a platformer and loosely, a beat 'em up, S&P is a rail shooter. Muramasa added elements to the basic formuals of old games and coupled that with a stunning art style. S&P does more or less the same thing, adding dodging and melee elements to a game that could've been just like House of the Dead or Time Crisis.

I don't need to rehash what I've already said in another post about this game's details. It is simply awesome. And it just goes to show that you don't need super PS3 visuals, or a completely modern set of mechanics to make the best game. If there's anything particularly forward-thinking about this game, it is that it's probably the best use of a motion controller I've seen yet. The wiimote/nunchuk combo is perfect for it. The mechanics themselves aren't even new... they were clearly defined in the first S&P game that came out for the Nintendo64 years ago (now on the Virtual Console, go buy it). But those original controls took some serious getting used to, but on the Wii they're a breeze.

Given the legendary setpieces of the original S&P game, and the sheer scale of its onscreen action (pretty much developer Treasure's standard) it would've taken one hell of a game for the sequel to top the original. And that's exactly what was delivered.

Sin and Punishment: Star Successor is a must-own title for the Wii. And an swift shot to the balls of anyone who trots out the usual bullshit about the Wii being a suckass console. It has incredible visuals, blazing action, is difficult, hardcore, and a high point for the machine's standard controller.

Score that ten out of ten.