An Introduction: Let's Play Parallel Worlds

As of right now, I'm writing out what's basically going to be my script for the introduction video on a project that I'm currently working on.

*Didn't that used to say Nintendo?

*Since when is the triforce blue?

*sigh, Hi folks, welcome to Let's Play The Legend of Zelda: Parallel Worlds. For those of you not in the know, Parallel Worlds is an extensive romhack of A Link to the Past released in 2007 by hackers Euclid and Seph. A Link to the Past has pretty much been gutted here and we're left with a brand new overworld, 12-ish new dungeons, a new story, new sprites, rebalanced items, a new HUD and altered game mechanics. Parallel Worlds may as well be its own game at this point, the only problem is that it isn't a very good game. You know what, that may be a little too kind; Parallel Worlds is the biggest trainwreck to hit the romhacking scene. This game is held back by one gigantic, if not monumental flaw; it's way too hard and oftentimes unfairly so. Not only is the game overly difficult, but there was literally no care put into where certain enemies would be placed. In fact, I feel that there are several times when Euclid and Seph went out of their way to make the game as painful and as hateful as humanly possible. The real tragedy here is the romhacking itself is good, the game is relatively pretty and there are some ideas that I think would genuinely benefit the Zelda series if Miyamoto ever applied them.

Before I start and show off this clustered mess of a game, I just wanted to start off with an introductory video explaining a few things.

First off, despite hours of trying to figure out a solution, I simply couldn't work out a way to record from my stereo mix on my laptop. I know that it may be a little bit unfun not hearing the classic music or the sound, but I've decided to remedy the situation by adding backround MP3s to the videos. They're going to be fairly quiet as you can hear right now and I'm going to try my damnedest to try and make my choices as fitting as possible. I'll start off with each video with the appropriate song that corresponds to whatever I'm doing in the video. From there, I'll probably deviate to other fitting music, almost untirely from other games with a similar feel or similar sound and go from there.

Secondly, this game has been LP'd before. Zomodok and Diabetus did a pretty good one on the Something Awful forums a few years back and it's probably the best LP currently out there. Now, if what I said was true, there would be no real reason for me to LP this, right? Well, despite my compliments to their efforts, the first half of the series has kind of fallen into ruin with the original videos either being in terrible quality or just plain lost. You can't go back to the LPArchives and watch the end of the game, the videos are simply lost to time. Even so, the videos that are there are pretty lengthy, mostly due to it being their first time through the game. The videos have a lot of fluff and could have used some trimming back. This is something that I've taken into consideration with my plans for this LP, and hopefully I can do their previous work justice. Also, I know there are at least three other amatuer LP'ers on Youtube who have also done the game, but I feel that there really isn't a whole lot of polish behind their work. Once again, there is a lot of fluff to their videos and hardly any crunch so to speak.

Thirdly, I've never really done an LP before. This is all a learning experience for me and I'm really not expecting to be the best around town when it comes to making these videos. I have a tendency to be pretty monotoned and I'm pretty guilty of being a mumbler and I often trip over my own words. I'm really not the kind of person who should be LPing at all, but I'm going to try and do it anyway. Hopefully I'll improve quickly, but I can't promise that my commentary is going to be the backbone of the LP.

My fourth point is that I'd really like for this series to be a community LP. When I say this, I mean that this game gets pretty nonlinear around the 1/4th point. When you get to the Darkworld in Parallel Worlds, you're pretty much given free reign to go wherever you want and do the dungeons in whatever order that you desire. The item in one dungeon is never required to finish another. When it gets to that point, I'll let everyone know what dungeons have what items and let you guys go hogwild when it comes to the dungeon order. Another neat little thing about Parallel Worlds is that the Darkworld dungeons aren't required to beat the game. All you need to go through the endgame dungeon is the Cane of Somaria and the Fire Rod. I'll also apply the same rule with getting items in the overworld so long as there are certain stipulations to make the game playable for myself.

Lastly, I won't be using savestates throughout the LP. This is one of my biggest gripes in both terms of watching LPs and when it comes to playing fangames and romhacks. As such, I will be forgoing them altogether.

All that said, I hope you'll continue and watch the series as I play through this monstrosity. Thanks for you time and have a good day.

Dreaming Through a Lack of Sleep

As I've blogged before, I beat Chrono Trigger for the first time last year despite owning the game for years. I had always either gotten distracted or had my memory card corrupt over the years, but I finally sat down to do it. At first, I was incredibly frustrated with how slow the combat was (even at the highest settings) and how simple it was. I set the game down for a few months and moved onto different things. While going through HCBailey's backlog of Let's Plays, I got the overwhelming desire to return to the game and finish what I had never done before.

After I got through with it, I wanted to continue with the Chrono series and quickly moved onto to Cross. Despite how much I enjoyed the game for what it was, I ended up shelving it for something else. As far as I had known at the time, I was done with the series for the foreseeable future. It wasn't until a few months later during a bout with insomnia that the Chrono series saw its return, only this time it was in a much different form than before; a visual novel for the Satellaview.

I had known about the game for quite a while and never really understood the appeal of it. At one point, I had even tried it out and simply quit after about ten minutes out of sheer disgust. This wasn't the Chrono sequel I had wanted and I couldn't imagine any true Chrono fan enjoying it. It wasn't until i was in a sleep deprived state that I actually ventured my way into the game. As I sat back on the couch with my wireless headphones on, I was taken to a dark and mysterious world with Kid the thief, Magil the magician and a rather talkative Serge. I wandered through Lynx's mansion for what seemed like an eternity, but found interesting details all around me. From the deathtraps of the arboretum to the gentleman monster, I found myself enthralled with what was being displayed before my eyes.

I was familiar with this scenario beforehand from my experience with Chrono Cross; most of it was re-imagined for the game with a whole lot less details. It's to be expected really, a videogame can only tell someone so much through visual appeal while a visual novel can give players intimate details about the smallest nooks and crannies. Even still, Lynx's mansion in Cross felt like a really annoying video game dungeon and ultimately didn't pack any of the punch that it did in Dreamers. The mansion in Dreamers is an enigma told through written word that we, the players, have the fortune of delving into. Every room has something interesting about it and even those that are less interesting than others are returned to in the game's alternative scenarios. Through the words of Masato Kato, Lynx's mansion oozes with atmosphere and almost feels like a living world rather than an interactive piece of literature.

The meeting with Lynx is done pretty differently in both games if I remember right, which makes sense since one sets up the foe for the rest of the game and the other is pretty much the end of the game in itself. Lynx in Cross is just your typical Big Bad and goes about his nasty business and poisons Kid, while Lynx in Dreamers actually opens Kid's mind and reveals the truth about who she is, what her role in the world is and the connections to Chrono Trigger. It's the pivotal moment and it's done incredibly well. Maybe it was my tired eyes that early morning, but I felt almost on the verge of tears to see the realization of what Kato had put together for the player. The scene, and the whole game for that matter, is done with an extremely low budget with very limited visual appeal, but something about the scene with the Earth, the sky and the flying whale was just touching. Maybe Cross comes back to this same kind of revelation at later point, but Radical Dreamers simply blew me away with the scene.

For a visual novel to really work, it needs a complimentary soundtrack to accompany it. Radical Dreamers outright delivers on this premise and actually gives a pretty good indication of where Yasunori Mitsuda would be going with his music. When I say a good indication, I really mean that as most of the music in Radical Dreamers actually reappears in Cross with excellent fidelity. The tracks from Radical Dreamers are absolutely fantastic, yet they fit so well with Chrono Cross that I'm sure no one finds them in the least bit out of place in that game. To follow along with the Way I've been doing music lately, I'll go ahead and give examples of the music that reappears (pretty much only because I want to listen to them as I write this post).

Gale (Radical Dreamers)

Gale (Chrono Cross)


Snake Bone Mansion (Radical Dreamers)

Snake Bone Mansion (Chrono Cross)


The Girl Who Stole The Stars (Radical Dreamers)

Star Stealing Girl (Chrono Cross)


Frozen Flame (Radical Dreamers)

Frozen Flame (Chrono Cross)


All of these are great tracks in both their forms. Ultimately, I think Chrono Cross probably has one of the greatest soundtracks of all time, so I guess none of this should be a massive surprise. Since I'm enjoying this whole Youtube song embedding thing, I'll leave you readers with two of the best tracks from the soundtrack for putting up with my nonsense. Have a great day!

Dream of the Shore in Another World


Dragon God

Praise to the Goddess: A Very Brief Look at Religion in Dragon Quest

Dragon Quest IX is around the corner and I simply cannot wait. While I like the bigger emphasis on story and characters that came with the past four games, I'm more a fan of the mechanics than anything else. Everything I've heard about the game from the random dungeons to the job system entice me more than I ever thought possible.

To psyche myself up for the game, I've picked up three games hoping to get myself in the proper mood: Dragon Warrior, Dragon Quest IV DS and Dragon Quest VIII. I've already finished and enjoyed Dragon Warrior despite how grindy it was, I'm nearly done with IV and I honestly don't have any intention of beating VIII before IX comes out. I've thoroughly enjoyed my experience thus far and feel properly psyched at this point.

One thing I have noticed in playing through the series is how religion seems to play into these worlds. The people of Dragon Quest seem to be very pious, yet few seem to really commit to their faith. Throughout most of these games, you can find priests spread out through the pubs enjoying a good brew, flirting with various women or even abstaining from their duties to pursue earthly joys. My favorite example of this is actually from VIII in the city of Baccarat where you see an elderly father enticed by a bunnygirl show. I can't remember the quote off memory, but it's something along the line of "Forgive me Goddess, I should be watching the church." Ultimately, these figures of religion are painted in a very fallible light that I doubt you'd see from Western media outside satire and parody. These people are just that, people. They have their flaws, their desires and their goals and they aren't held down by their goddess-given duties. Even with all their negative flaws out on display, they aren't seen as a jab on religion, but more as a commentary on the humanity of the purveyors of our faith. It's something that I find somewhat fascinating and hope to see more of in the future.

Because I'm in the Mood for Game Music: Let's Listen to Gravity Man's Theme

Let it be known that I don't really like Mega Man V all that much. While it's a clear cut above Mega Man IV, something about it has always felt off to me. Maybe it's the waveracer in Wave Man's stage or maybe it's the whole stupid idea of trying to make Proto Man a bad guy again. Regardless, I really, really like the music in Mega Man V. My favorite track should be fairly easy to guess if you've noticed either the picture above this paragraph or my ridiculous title for the post.

(Pst... It's Gravity Man's theme)

Since posting about the music of the Donkey Kong Country series got me in the mood, I thought I'd just share the song and some of the remixes that have come along since.

Gravity Man


If you're used to the music that's shown up in the prior Mega Man games, you'll find something that's kind of off about Gravity Man's theme. There isn't really a defining melody in the song and what's there is almost an 8-bit attempt at either Prog rock or Jazz Fusion. It's pretty strange when you think about it in context of songs like Elec Man, Crash Man or even some of the more adventurous songs like Shadow Man's theme. I guess what I really like about the song is just how balls out freaking creative it is for a game that I've always felt was lacking in terms of sheer ingenuity. I've listened to it repeatedly to try and see if its charm runs out, but I've yet to tire of it.



Gravity Man[Jazz Techno] by Shachinobu


This remix is probably my least favorite traditional take on the track. Every note that was in the original song is present here and the flourishes that are added atop it are pretty nice. The horns were somewhat distracting at first, I've grown to appreciate them a bit after repeated listens. In the end though, I don't think I like it that much.



Gravity Man Remix #2


I honestly have no idea where this one came from. If I had to take a guess, I'd say it actually came from Capcom in that PSX Rock Man collection that Japan saw. This one is really nice, it gives the original track a bit greater care than the other one did. The chorus was treated really nicely and it's played lowkey enough to stay true to the original. Overall, the real highlight of this remix is the basswork. (Sorry for the repeat of the traditional theme after the remix ends.)



Gravity Man (8-Bit VRC7 Remix) by NewAgeRetroGamer


I honestly had no idea what VRC7 meant prior to hearing this remix. Apparently, it's a special sound chip that Konami used in one game, Lagrange Point, for the Famicom. If I had to describe it to someone, I'd just say "think Genesis/Megadrive." Simply put, it sounds a good deal better than NES Monaural sound but not quite SNES quality. For the most part, I really like it, but it does get a little dissonant during my favorite part, but maybe that's just being true to the particular sound chip this guy is trying to emulate. It's good stuff.



Gravity Man Stage (Aftermath Sleaze Edit) by Zinger


This particular remix actually made it on an actual CD, Chiptuned Rockman, so it really makes me happy that the track gets love from others. Zinger's remix is probably the most polarizing for me as a fan of the original song and as a fan of music in general. The end result is really appealing to me, but I can't listen to it without noticing the two best parts of the original song have been cut out in their entirety. In the end, I guess it's okay, but a part of me is still saddened.



Well, hopefully if Mega Man V gets a growth in popularity and nostalgia, it will be for the right reasons instead of the wrong. I could go on about some other tracks from the game, but I'll refrain. When I play games, I can't help but feel like the music is one of the driving forces for my enjoyment. The music is the only reason I still play Mega Man V and I find it to be a pretty damned good reason.

Revisiting Donkey Kong Country

Throughout the recent years, I've noticed an odd trend of bashing the Donkey Kong Country games to no ends. The series was one of my favorites as a kid, so I thought I'd take a trip back and see if maybe there was a bad game in there that I just didn't see as a kid.

The first game tends to get the most hatred spewed towards it and is naturally the one that's a little rough around the gills. Most of the stages feel pretty shallow and insubstantial, but there are some genuinely good ideas interspersed here and there. There's several moments such as the first Mine cart stage or the stop-go stage or the stage with oil drums that take a concept and see how hard they can push it, but for the most part, the stages are just stretches of baddies and barrels. Out of all the games, the first feels the most traditional in its design. That special part of me would go so far as to say it cribs Super Mario World a bit more than Miyamoto was probably comfortable with.

The second one is clearly the strongest of the bunch and probably Rare's defining work as a game developer. If I had condense the game down to one word, I'd probably go with "fresh". Donkey Kong Country 2 took the foundation that the first game laid out and added idea after idea to it to see exactly how far they could push the game. With the exception of two or three stages, each level has one unique thing going on that's only seen in that stage. From parrot races to haunted roller coasters windswept arenas full of casyms. The biggest addition to the game is probably the three new animal friends that add new versatility to your transportation. Rattler the rattlesnake can jump to exciting heights, Squitter the Spider creates his own footing and shoots webs and Squawks the Parrot can freaking fly. Come to think of it, the addition of Dixie Kong adds a layer of strategy that was only toyed with in the first game. Helicopter hair adds wiggleroom to dangerous falls or perilous boss fights and makes for bigger risk/reward type scenarios. Diddy Kong keeps his ability from the first game of having the rolling double-jump, so he isn't nerfed by this new character.

Donkey Kong Country 3 has the same "freshness" going for itself, but it lacks the polish and the character that made the second game as good as it was. This game prides itself just as much as the previous games when it comes to new ideas for each stage. We've got rocket barrels, pull switches, scared elephants, low gravity reversed directions and more. The problem with these additions is simply that I don't think they play tested the game as much as they did with the first two games. DKC3 is flat out balls hard in some spots and you've got nothing on your side except patience. The other games were hard, but you always had a secondary option when things got too tough. The example that I like to point out is in the barrel section of World 4 in the first game. Here we have a section that simply takes a great degree of both patience and timing to get through and simply makes me want to yank my hair out trying to get through it. Rare obviously saw that this was a difficult section and added a secret barrel that shoots you bellow all the irritation and even rewards you with bananas and a Kong letter. While a player might get frustrated with it, they're bound to find this secret area on their third or fourth try. Donkey Kong Country 3 simply doesn't have any of this at all. It's just flat out hard for the sake of being hard and that irks me to no end.

One of the biggest cornerstones of the retroactive hate this series gets is its graphics. Pre-rendered graphics made their debut with this series (as far as I know anyways, I'm probably wrong here) and they were seen as the future. The problem is that they haven't aged nearly as well as traditional sprites. I can't claim to know a whole lot about aesthetics, but I guess I'll be trite here and just say that the "I don't know art, but I know what I like" saying stands true for me. There's something endearing to me about the pre-rendered look that takes me back to world before the Nintendo 64 when we were getting a (false) glimpse into what the future would look like. I won't lie and say that I prefer the look to hand drawn sprites, because I don't, but I can't imagine this particular series with regular sprites.

So while I figured out that the first game served as a great foundation to the series and that the third game simply isn't as enjoyable as its predecessors, the series has fantastic music all around. David Wise presents a great showing of videogame music in tracks such as:

Jungle Groove


Fear Factory


Gang-Plank Galleon


Token Tango


Boss Bossanova


Haunted Chase


Jangle Bells


Nuts and Bolts


Just flat out good game music all around. Even stronger are the atmospheric songs. With the exception of one of the songs I'm going to show, I flat out didn't have any appreciation for any of these songs as a kid. If you had given me the option of listening to these songs or any music in something like Mario game, I would have always chosen Mario. With a little bit of age and a greater appreciation for minimalism and flavor strokes, I have to say that some of these are my favorite pieces of music in the 16-bit era. Here are just some of them:

Aquatic Ambiance


Life in the Mines


Bayou Boogie


Forest Interlude


Stickerbrush Symphony


Mining Melancholy


Mama Bird


Treetop Tumble


Frankly, reading all the hate that this series gets is really beyond me. I mean, they were never the be all, end all of the SNES, but the series as a whole had a lot of damn fine moments (including about 95% of DKC2 and about 35% of 1& 3). Hopefully, this will get some people to give the series an honest look again, because while they may not be platinum hits, they're far from fools gold.

A New Post

A new post? What Madness is this???

I haven't done a damned thing with this blog since January and I think I should attempt to rectify it. It isn't like I haven't had anything to talk about. Maybe it's because I've been busy or maybe it's because I can't seem to muster up the will power to keep up with a blog. I'm not going to make any empty promises here, but I think I may post from time to time to blow off steam. Of course, I'm still going to be talking primarily about video games, in fact, I'd say I'm going to be talking near exclusively about video games.

I guess I'll kick it off by talking about what I've been playing lately. As shocking as it may sound, I've been playing a lot of RPGs lately. Specifically, Mass Effect 2, Final Fantasy XIII and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey with a little bit of NetHack thrown in for good measure. I've beaten ME2 twice, and I'm near the very end of both FFXIII and SMT:SJ. I don't really know how I feel about any of them considering I've only beaten one of them and that game is radically different from it's predecessor. Maybe my next post will be about it, or maybe I'll go into my new found love for NetHack.

Discovery and Jealousy Through Gaming

At the ripe, young age of twenty-one, I can't help but feel retroactively jealous of those who came and gamed before me. I have quite the extended family, and gaming has been in their lives as much as it has been in mine. The reason why I feel so jealous is not because I seemingly missed out on what I see as the golden age. In reality, I was gaming right along side them --often times as their better-- but while they retained many of their fond memories, I have not due to my youth. When I mention that it is my youth that plagues my memories of the classics, I mean to say that I was heavily induced in the culture and lifestyle presented in film classics like The Wizard at the age of two.

My parents often joke that their gaming while I was in the womb carried over to me and sapped them of their former love. As soon as I was cognitively aware of my surroundings, it was not toys and stuffed animals I was enthralled with, but it was shoving the controllers into the hands of my elders and watching a world enfold before my very eyes. From the bright, cheery fields of Subcon to the dank, depths of Zebes, every new game was an experience. It was as much my experience as the one playing. Eventually, the controller moved from my parents' hands to my own and with it, our shared adventures became solely, my own.

Growing up, however, is when the seeds of contempt were spread into me as I wished that I could remember all the 'gems' of my youth. Naturally, I remember your Super Mario Bros. and your Legend of Zeldas, but if I told you that I didn't have about a hundred mental images of games I was trying to place, I'd be spinning quite the yarn. I'm constantly telling myself "If only I was a little bit older, then surely I would remember."

It is at this point that I even begin to wonder why it is that I even want to remember the games of my past. Maybe it's a testament to the quality of the games I remember as opposed to the ones that have slipped from the grey matter slope in over-sized head of mine. Maybe games like Hocus Pocus or Jill of the Jungle are meant to be forgotten. As much as I tell myself this, however, I can't help but feel like I'm lying to myself.

It is a sense of discovery that I'm craving, not just another good game to add to my collection. The feeling of treading unexplored grounds through the television is one that was so embedded in my own personal history that I feel as if I were an archaeologist at a new dig every time I discover a new game. It doesn't matter whether the game is a long lost classic like Shatterhand or if it's another tepid clone like The Krion Conquest. Each 'new' discovery makes me as giddy as a school girl.

And this brings me back to the subject of my retroactive jealousy. I've come to discover that it isn't their memories themselves that fuels my contempt, but it's the reference point that I wish I had. If I had been around a few years earlier, the wider breadth of experience could be a catalyst in my discoveries.

While this jealousy may never go away, the optimist inside me constant sends reminders that "tis a good thing you don't remember." And I guess it is a good thing, because my inexperience compared to my peers only leads me to more new discoveries. After all, how fun would archaeology be if all the dinosaurs and ruins were already in plain sight.