I took a quick break from Dokapon Journey--which I have a lot of fun with--to sample Punch Out!! on Wii, which arrived in my hungry mailbox today. It's really a whole lot of fun. I love the little aesthetic touches that the developers have made to the fighters when they're bruised, as well as to the music for each person; for instance, the "Game Over" screen music from the NES version now serves as the "You Won!" screen music--but the motif changes for each fighter. So if you've just beaten Von Kaiser, the music is tinged with a wartime Germany bent. If you've just beaten Disco Kid, the music is tinged with a disco beat and the appropriate instrumentation.

Of course, the gameplay is as expected. The mechanics are just as tight as they were in the NES and SNES Punch Out!! titles, but what I really like is how you build up Star punches to be a stronger single punch as opposed to having a stockpile of 3. In other words: Every star punch you earn is contributed to a cumulative build-up. You can build up to a level 3 punch, so when you hit the button, that star punch packs a whole hell of a lot more power than a level 1. Of course, you no longer have the ability to fire off three star punches consecutively because throwing a star punch makes use of all of your stars, regardless of how many you have.

The podcast had a few hiccups. Sound files are screwed up again, but I managed to worm my way around the problem with a lot of time and patience. It should be up tomorrow. The Trilobytes should be up too (by tomorrow). Been a busy week. Damn that Dokapon!

Went down to Atlanta this weekend to visit my best friend and his newborn son. Hence, no podcast. Still please send in mail though for next week (mailbag AT trigames DOT net), and enjoy these random baby (and non-baby) pics.

I don't know if the Gint Bum will mind that I post my vid from "that other site" (if you do, admins, just shoot me a PM and I'll try to edit it down to fit into a 10-min youTube :P), but yeah -- evidence that Dragonball Evolution can, in fact, be beaten with a single button (square). Or, at least, that you can get through the first few fights on the hardest difficulty with a single button.

Gamespot sent me Lux-Pain to review, and boy is it shit. The review's been up but I still have some gold that I took from the game in the form of AWFULY TRANSLATE DIALOUGE. Boy howdy is that translation terrible. So terrible, in fact, that I felt compelled to updated the Gint Bum page for the game with the various misspellings and grammatical errors I found. Let's hope it makes it in!!!! But just in case it doesn't, here's what I posted... voila:

One of the main criticisms leveled against Lux-Pain is its odd localization, or lack thereof. There's plenty of room for unintentional humor given the numerous misspellings, grammatical errors, and incredibly literal translations ("I ate his mind") found within. All the samples below are exactly as they appear in the game, including such gaffes as misplaced apostrophes.

Spelling sampler

• "afterall" instead of "after all"
• "aluring" instead of "alluring"
• "auther" instead of "author"
• "Burse office" instead of "Nurse's office"
• "centrall" instead of "central"
• "concent" instead of "consent"
• "donno'" instead of "dunno"
  
• "existance" instead of "existence"
• "enterance" instead of "entrance"
• "imbiciles" instead of "imbeciles"
• "kood" instead of "mood"
• "noone" instead of "no one"
• "oppinion" instead of "opinion"
• "outta'" instead of "oughta"
• "rationaly" instead of "rationally"
• "talk" instead of "talk"

• "What do you do to be cute? Oh well then, my customers are pathetic."
• "I will eat his mind."
• "I hate people who say things should be fair and balanced! You gotta' work hard in my class!"
• "Did you know Yung proposed graduating class? For those who say their's no relation, there is."
• "I wanna protect it. This town, and it's people."
• "You take finish mine!"
• "The internet was cancelled one year ago."
• "Not at all. This class is goes on well."
• "It makes happy to hear that."
• "Seeing such joy is what is to some people."
• "We're investigating his to save him in secrecy."
• "After Fall comes Christmas. A time for lovers."
• "Have you ever think love and happiness arent' real?"

OnLive -- the new tech unveiled at GDC that will let you stream games from a server to your cozy house without any bulky console hardware or child-threatening, razor sharp discs -- sounds insanely awesome up front. If what they claim is true -- that there will be minimal lag impacting your gameplay experience -- the technology really could give consoles a run for their money.

Actually, could it? As I read about this thing, with with every point of interest that make me giddy -- the potential to be piracy-proof (or at least as proof as you can get these days); complete abstraction and lowered costs of hardware; parity with in-store release dates (at least for the library on offer) -- there's at least one issue that makes me cast some doubt on OnLive's feasibility at this point in time. I'm not saying that it has no chance -- I just have some reservations, and would like to know more about a few things before we can actually say that consoles as we know them might be in danger.

OnLive sports a minimum requirement of a 1.5 Mbps internet connection for lag-free standard definition gameplay. Now, the only data I could pull up in my hurried Google search was this report that the average broadband speed in the United States sits at 2.3 Mbps as of August of 2008. Then there's this number from 2007 that more than one fifth of the population of both Canada and the United States. So, things aren't too shabby on that end. What I'd like to know, though -- besides what the up-to-date numbers are, of course -- is the breakout of connection speeds among those who play games (casual, hardcore, or otherwise). Do enough gaming folk have (or want and can afford) the necessary 1.5 Mbps connection? How much of that higher end (which brings the average up to 2.3) is for those who run small home businesses and/or have no desire to game? How many of those lacking the necessary connection speeds are those who demand an intense single-player experience? What will the growth of broadband penetration be like by the time the next generation of consoles comes around? Oh -- let's not forget about those Comcast data caps. How will those affect an OnLive subscriber, if at all?

I'm not going to call it on broadband penetration alone. I was one of the doubtful mob members who thought that Microsoft's reliance on broadband (i.e. no POTS modem), and the inability to get Xbox Live running for the first year of the original Xbox's existence, would prove to be that console's undoing. Look where Xbox Live is now. But that's why I also want to know where our culture -- as consumers and gaming aficionados -- stands, and where it will go. I want to know the division in the marketplace between those who still like holding a product in their hands versus those who hate clutter and welcome the 1's and 0's streaming over a network. Gamestop doesn't seem to be doing too shabbily. But then again, Steam doesn't exist on consoles, and the only high-profile, previously retail-only release that's also fully downloadable for consoles -- that I know of -- is Burnout Paradise (whoops, and Warhawk -- thanks confucioussayyo). (I'm sure there are a few others I'm missing.) That GTA IV: The Lost And The Damned DLC is actually available in retail stores as a boxed download code card further makes me wonder just how many people are (and will be) ready to be done with the retail experience for good.

This bit about culture also has to do with how much control we as consumers like to have over our product. A small somewhat-comparable example is the fact that I worry constantly that my Wii will break. Should this happen, I'll lose all access to my downloaded Virtual Console and Wii shop content because of the way they handle online accounts (or lack thereof). I have to go through Nintendo to re-download, whereas Xbox Live lets me re-download games I've wiped off my drive. Now, this isn't to say that OnLive will use the same methodology as Nintendo -- rather, I bring the Wii example up to show how little-to-no user control will hurt. If your internet connection goes kaput, or OnLive's network goes down for maintenance, you can't play anything. At least Steam has Offline Play mode, but even then, you actually have the game code stored on your hard drive. OnLive promises that you won't ever have to be bogged down with that... even if you want to. Y'know, sometimes having a clumsy hard drive is a good thing. So the question here is, how much control is afforded to the user?

All that noted, I'm still excited to see OnLive's working technology in the flesh. I think that the ability to push that amount of processor-intensive data with speeds enough to allow for real-time play can have great implications for eliminating lag in online multiplayer gaming, among other things. Imagine, in the next decade, having a portable gaming device that runs off of evolved OnLive technology -- wirelessly -- without waiting for full downloads or being restricted by hardware. Imagine OnLive becoming gaming platform limited only by the inputs of your currently-available hardware, allowing you to access your subscription from any appropriate device as long as you can log in (remember Microsoft's fabled Live Anywhere? Where'd that go... hmm!).

For now, it's all pie in the sky, and until we can get the answers to some important questions, OnLive's success is anything but guaranteed, or even possible. Maybe "success" to the OnLive team isn't mainstream exposure, but rather enough of a niche market to sustain its supposed low maintenance costs. I just hope it doesn't end up too far ahead of its time. There's too much cool factor in there for OnLive to fail before it's ever given the chance to spread its wings.

Dear old-school RPG developers making games for the Nintendo DS, specifically those responsible for Dragon Quest IV: Chapters Of The Chosen... er...

Ok, let me start again.

Dear Arte Piazza, the studio which developed Dragon Quest IV: Chapters Of The Chosen for the Nintendo DS:

Hi! You may have noticed that the Nintendo DS has a touch screen. This little technical marvel allows players to tap directly at menu choices and commands to execute them, as an alternative to navigating a cursor via a varied amount of d-pad taps and a confirmation button press.

What does this mean? Well, what might normally take six d-pad taps and three button presses would require just three taps. What might normally require a full second would require half of that. Now, these numbers might sound a little nitpicky and insignificant, but you may have *also* noticed that your game requires a lot of grinding for levels. When you spend hours upon hours in battle menu screens that require nothing more than d-pad taps and button presses, not to mention the hours you'll spend managing your inventory which also leave you in menu screens that require nothing more than d-pad taps and button presses, maybe -- just maybe -- those potential half-seconds saved add up, hmm?

The game you've developed also gives each character his or her own item bag in addition to the communal item bag. As such, you've allowed characters to swap items. Have you ever heard of "drag and drop"? It's this amazing new feature invented when the first graphical user interface surfaced in personal computing about, oh, I'd say well over two decades ago. You select an item... drag it over to where you want it to go... and then unselect it! With a touch-screen interface, swapping items between characters in Dragon Quest IV: Chapters Of The Untouchable becomes a piece of cake instead of managing Chernobyl! Fancy that.

The fact that you've represented menu commands such as Fight, Item, and Line-Up in these very large outlined boxes is a great start in creating an interface that one can operate by using even the meatiest of index fingers. Now, the next step is -- wait for it -- actually implementing the touch part. If you're going to port a game that can legitimately be played ENTIRELY with finger or stylus taps without missing a beat to a platform that has a touch screen for finger and stylus taps, it probably makes sense to allow your audience to use that technology. But then, I'm no game designer, hahaha!

While we're here, let me make two more observations.

1) Every time a character levels up, the game scrolls through each individual's attribute upgrades and spells learnt -- consecutively, I might add -- via the same tiny text box you use for in-game battle narration. You may have noticed that the DS has not one, but TWO full screens with which you could have displayed all of that information simultaneously. Wow! The things that the 21st century has to offer!

2) I think it's charming, in an old-school "You'll do things the way we tell you to" way, that you force your players to find a priest in order to see how many experience points each character needs to level up. I think it's even more charming that this information is delivered sequentially, one character after another, in a scrolling text box. Finally, it's ever so loyal of you to stick to Dragon Quest's roots with this method of info gathering. But for the idiots and lazy people out there -- you know, like me -- maybe you could do us a favor and let us see this information laid out in each character's attributes page. Because, you know, us stupid ones only really want to see info for one or two characters once in awhile. And, ya know, sometimes that priest is too far away. (Also, some of us are atheists.)

Thanks a ton -- kisses!

MrC

P.S. - This letter will arrive too late for you to actually think about these thangs for Dragon Quest V for the DS, but do think about it for Dragon Quest VI. Or, you know, any other old-school RPG you decide to port to a modern-day, touch-screen enabled platform.

P.P.S. - I like your game. But next time, please don't make it so hard to like.

Thanks to aspro73 for your Dissidia Potion entry! It was great. Everyone, the deadline is February 28th, 2009 at Noon.

I'd like to answer edu's DQV question from my previous GS blog. After having read some reviews on the game, I can definitely say that I am looking forward to buying DQV -- even with my DQIV fatigue. My main problem is that the battle system never seems to offer any hook other than attack, attack, heal, buff, rinse, lather, repeat. From what I've read, at least DQV affords you a full-blown monster partner system that's way more advanced than the random NPC comrades you encounter in DQIV. So while before I would have just bought it to experience a game that never came Stateside, boring battle sytem be damned, I'm now actually looking forward to enjoying its improvements over its predecessor.

On to the blurb and pimpage.

===Episode 122: Trilobyte===

Austin and Al discuss their discussion-worthy Trilobyte topics, and receive a pleasant surprise in the mailbag when listener Aspro73 leaves the first Dissidia Potion contest entry. With Pete absent this episode, you can find his musings in ihs Trilobyte mini-episode that went live on Friday, February 13th, 2009. And don't forget -- if you want to win the Final Fantasy Dissidia potion, you'd best submit your essay (of 500 words maximum) about the Dissidia potion. It could be a tale about a Dissidia potion. Or, it could be a story in which the Dissidia potion is sentient and the main character -- whatever. It just has to be about the Dissidia potion!

Not if you're me, at least. Allow me to ramble on about nothing and at no one in particular.

I've made much about my insanely lengthy backlog. Every year, I manage to scoop up some of the top games for that particular year. Every year, I manage to barely finish any of them. In fact, the games I do end up finishing are from years past.

Example? The only games I finished from 2008 are as follows:

Final Fantasy IV (DS)

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (DS)

Too Human (X360)

The Too Human "completion" is debatable, because I've only played a few hours of multiplayer with Al. I haven't played as two of the classes yet, either. Come to think of it, the Final Fantasy IV "completion" is debatable as well -- I haven't yet completed a New Game + yet. Also, I'm not counting the fifteen or so 2008 games I've completed for Gamespot reviews. Technically that's "work" and I'm keeping it to games that I play for leisure.

This is the sad truth about growing up and taking on a career path that doesn't benefit from you playing games until your head explodes. Though nowhere near as brutal as a job in finance, consulting can often keep you in the office for 12 hours a day, potentially including weekends, with a normal work day's worth of time on the road. This is why I'm always traveling -- out of the 65 months I've been with the company, only 20 of them have been spent commuting between my apartment and the client site on a daily basis. The rest of the time I've been living out of a suitcase Monday through Thursday, and taking my 360 or PS3 with me isn't exactly the easiest thing to do.

Outside of that, I spent the last two years studying for my GMATs and preparing applications for Business School. It's not that I definitely know that I want to go, but it'd be nice to have that option should the economy finally knock me on my butt.

Then there's the fact that I have a lot of non-gaming friends. Rarely do I ever play games with any friends -- Al is almost the only one, and even then I can count the number of times I've played non-Rock Band with him in the last year on a single hand -- and instead I'm taking in dinners, movies, or improv shows.

Here's the scary part: I have no idea how a lot of you manage to do it. I'm talking about the ones with families, more intense jobs, or both. People like my Gamespot friends kellymae, MsCortana, Bozanimal (financial guru AND the father of triplets!?), and even Al who works really insane night hours instead of being at work during the day like a human. These are just a few -- I'm sure there are more of you out there whom I've forgotten.

Perhaps it's simply time that I discipline myself to playing recent games. Here's the problem: I've spent a lot of time and money on the older games I own, and I have to make good on that investment before I spend even MORE money. Things in my life have happened (good things, don't worry) that require me to penny-pinch.