Coming Soon

We should have an update in about two days. Thanks for your patience.

Hair Like the Feathers of a One Winged Angel

While at the office today, I saw the most extraordinary thing. A female co-worker had some perfect looking modern-day Japanese videogame hair.  The hair seemed to separate itself into many dozens of spiky-but-not-too-spiky little subdivisions that stuck out at slightly unnatural angles and moved away from the scalp in parabolic arcs. Oddly, all the little spikes looked soft, unlike the spikes in a Jersey Shore type hairstyle. The lady didn't look like an animoo/otoku geek type chick, but regardless, she was rocking some totally Final Fantasy Crisis Core cutscene style hair. (I suspect this same hairstyle might also be worn by K-Pop bands or something, but I'm not 100% sure.) I don't know what prompts someone to style their hair in such a manner, but, man, it looks like a lot of work.

This girl is one of the characters from Crisis Core, right?

In more Chrontendo related news, I'm posting all the old Chronsega episodes on Youtube in preparation for Chronsega 7. More Chrontendo episodes will follow in the near future.

I'm sure you guys have been following the game news lately, but there seems to be some upsurge in the vast, unwashed masses of videogame fans making a noticeable impact on the decision making processes of videogame companies. There was that whole "Operation Rainfall" which seems to have produced a US release for The Last Story as well as Xenoblade.  Bioware is now supposed to be preparing a response to the fan outcry over the ending of Mass Effect 3. Also, you have perhaps seen the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter thing? Proving the Double Fine adventure game was not a fluke, fans ponied up a million bucks in a few days, just for a sequel cultish 80's computer game.  I'm sure all this caused thousands of Sega enthusiasts to suddenly start dreaming of a Shenmue 3 Kickstarter.

Anyway, it's just odd that as democracy seems to be waning in larger public sphere (increasingly restrictive "anti-terrorism" laws, crackdowns on internet usage, etc, ) it has started flourishing in the world of electronic games.

I've updated the links recently. A couple interesting sites have been added. In terms of insane chronogaming type projects, we have The RPG Consoler, a fellow who is playing every console RPG (as the name would seem to imply.) So far, he is up to the first  Dragon Quest. These things usually end in a very tragic type of mental breakdown, so wish the poor fellow well.

There has been some traffic coming in from a blog called Why Modern Video Games Suck, which turns out to be not as curmudgeonly as it sounds. He actually likes lots of modern games! But he does find old school gaming principles endearing, so the blog is definitely worth a read.

Chronsega 7 is mostly recorded, so expect some news soon.

Rock Operas: Case Closed

Now that the epically delayed Chrontendo 43 is finally behind us, we can move on to other things. Chronsega 7 is looming on the horizon, and I can assure you it will be arriving in the near future. Spanning late 1988 to winter/spring 1989, it will cover one of the darker moments in Sega's history. They ended up sitting out the 1988 holiday season almost entirely. As Famicom games flooded the market, and as the PC Engine was picking up steam, Sega released a scant two games in December 1988: one Master System title and one Mega Drive title. One final Master System game was released in early 1989, and then... the console was dead in its home country. Eventually, the Genesis began to find success in the US, bolstered by games from several popular western publishers. Then the Master System would unexpectedly return to life in Europe and Brazil, outselling Nintendo consoles and even the Mega Drive for years in those territories. For the moment, though, we'll be seeing the Master System at its lowest ebb, with a steady trickle of low-quality games hitting the shelves.

I'm sorry, Cyborg Hunter fans, but this game is not all that.

Today, however, I want to present some evidence for a theory I posted earlier: that the release of a "rock opera" signals the creative and/or artistic demise of a musical act.

First, some parameters. It's not always clear whether an album should be classified as a rock opera or a concept album. The two genres are somewhat blurred together, but I would say that a proper rock opera has a few distinguishing features. It should have some consistent narrative and at least one well-defined character. Songs should make some attempt to progress the narrative or define the character. Often, songs will be sung in the voice of one the characters. In theory, you should be able to listen to a rock opera and understand the story. Concept albums, such as Sgt Peppers or Ziggy Stardust, might show some thematic unity, but it's pretty difficult to find a story in them. Can anyone out there tell me anything about "Weird and Gilley" and why exactly they wanted to crush Ziggy's "sweet hand?" Or why the world was ending in five years? It didn't help that Bowie stuck some older, unrelated songs on that album (e.g.,"Moonage Daydream.") And don't even get me started on Diamond Dogs (What the hell is a "diamond dog?" They are "poachers and they hide behind trees." WTF?)

Our first piece of evidence:

The granddaddy of the rock opera is usually considered to be The Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow. This established the "life of the male protagonist" format that later examples all followed. A great record, which followed several earlier great records from The Pretties. Immediately after the album was released, the band's founder and guitarist, Dick Taylor quit, followed by its drummer, Twink. The band released one more good album then slid into mediocrity.

At the time of Tommy's release, Pete Townshend apparently cited S.F. Sorrow as a major influence. Nowadays he claims to have never heard the album. Either way, Tommy follows the Sorrow pattern very closely in its structure. You might think that Tommy disproves my theory, since The Who's next album was also their best (Who's Next). But this is simply because The Who were too powerful to be destroyed by one rock opera; it took two. After Quadrophenia, there was a precipitous drop in the quality of The Who albums. Only a few years later, they would be putting out crap like Face Dancing.

Back then, it was legally required for pants to be painfully tight in the crotch

The Kinks were another fine British band slain by the rock opera. Their entry into the genre, Arthur was yet another LP in the "album named after the protagonist" mode. They made two good records after Arthur, and then, tempting fate, switched into an all rock opera career mode (Schoolboys in Disgrace, Soap Opera, etc.)! This folly wiped The Kinks off the map for the rest of the 70s.

Other examples:

Genesis and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Now, this is not my favorite Genesis album (that would be Foxtrot,) but it was a substantial commercial and critical success. It's release was followed by the most interesting guy in the band leaving. After that Genesis released two pretty-good records, and then the guitarist split.  At this point the band was basically just a rhythm section, and began its slow, steady decline from one of the most influential bands of the 70s to purveyors of utter crap in the 80s. A terrible toll was also taken on Phil Collins, who quickly underwent an astonishing transition from a great prog/fusion drummer to this guy:

To this day, complete strangers come up to Phil Collins and punch him in the face because of this video.

Pink Floyd

I'd say PF's decline began well before The Wall, but the fact is they only released one album worse than The Wall. That was its successor, The Final Cut, which is sort of the musical equivalent of being kicked in the nuts. I understand The Wall was a huge success and many people like it, but compare video footage from The Wall tour with earlier stuff like Live at Pompeii. You'll see a band that is a shadow of its former self, and has seemingly lost the will to live.

The Small Faces

Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake was a half great/half goofy rock opera-ish thing with wacky narration by Professor Stanley Unwin. The Small Faces celebrated its success by breaking up a few months after its release.

Jefferson Airplane

Blows Against the Empire was not quite a "real" Airplane album, but it was a silly sci-fi rock opera that spelled the end for the classic period of the band. It was followed by personnel shake ups, and a few years later, a name change to Jefferson Starship. I think you all know what happened then.

More like Knee Deep in the POOPla!

Green Day

Okay, Green Day was always sort of lame and derivative. Trust me, I know. I remember them from 'back in the day.' But they clearly became even more annoying with American Idiot.

Now obviously there are exceptions to every rule -- the rock opera rule included. Some of you might be itching to shout, "But Dr Sparkle, what about [some boring piece of crap] by [terrible progressive metal band]?  Yes, I'm sure that Dream Theater or Queensrÿche or whoever has released a whole bunch of really amazing sci-fi/dystopia/religious allegory themed records. But since most people stop listening that kind of music once they lose their virginity, I really don't see any point in investigating this further.

And hey, there are still cool band putting out rock operas, like Fucked Up's David Comes to Life. Still, I strongly suspect the next Fucked Up record will be not quite as good as David. So unless anyone has some strongly compelling counter-examples, I'm going to consider this case to be closed.

Episode 43 Hath Arrived!

Let me start by stating the obvious: after much delay, Chrontendo Episode 43 is available. You may stream it at Youtube, or get superior 60 fps h.264 versions on Archive.

As I mentioned earlier, this is a long episode; it covers the entire month of March, 1989 with a total of 20 games.  This "one month per episode" thing is not going to be permanent. Episode 44 will cover April, but will have quite a bit of bonus content since April, 1989 is light on games. 

Some interestintg comments were made about Famitsu magazine and their lists and game scores, as well as the overall issue of ranking games.  A little refresher about Famitsu's scoring: each game is reviewed by four people on a scale of one to ten. If a game receives four scores of 10, then it has obtained the "perfect" score of 40. In the past, Famitsu was very stingy about handing out perfect 40s. The only two games of the 1990's that received a perfect score were Zelda: OOT and Soul Caliber.  Since then, the perfect 40 has become more commonplace, with two or three a year not being uncommon.

For those who haven't seen it, I recommend this post on Magweasel, which translates a comic book conversion between Warp's Kenji Eno and Famitsu's Editor-in-Chief about the "fairness" or lack of fairness in the scoring system. It's quite informative about the magazine's philosophy behind the scores back in the 1990's.  Nowadays, or course, Famitsu gets chided for having loosened up its scoring process, and for handing out too many good scores, especially for popular games from major publishers.

How can you not trust a magazine with such elegant, understated cover design?

The same thing happens with Western gaming publications. Every time the new Uncharted or God of War game gets an A grade, accusations start flying around the internet. There are a couple reasons for this. First of all, professional game publications rely very heavily on game publishers for content.  Interviews, sneak peeks at upcoming games, advance review copies.... gaming mags and websites depend on these things to be competitive in the marketplace. I'm sure game publishers try to leverage this dependence from time to time.

Secondly, let's face it: as gamers, as lot of us have some pretty big chips on our shoulders.  We have declared our loyalty to certain companies, genres, and series and we often despise other companies, genres and series. And we love nothing more than making our feelings known to as many people as possible. The online gaming community is not the most vituperative group of people on the internet (that would be Yahoo News commentators and grammar/punctuation/word usage Nazis), but we love to tear down games we dislike.

An interesting manifestation of this is that the usual critic/fan duality is almost completely reversed.  Film critics are often labeled by the general public as being too critical. Movies that make hundreds of millions of dollars often receive very bad reviews.  Game fans, on the other hand, accuse professional game critics of being too lenient.  A quick examination of the reviews on Metacritic will demonstrate this. The majority of user reviews for movies will be higher than critics' reviews.  In the game category, the opposite is true. Check it out. An interesting corollary of this phenomenon: if a game title contains the words "Call of Duty," the the user reviews will be a good 30 points or more below the critics' reviews.

There is a notable exception to this rule.  One thing the armchair game critic (i.e.: myself and most people reading this) loves above all else is to champion the misunderstood or unjustly neglected game. This is especially true among fans of niche genres such as JRPGs, shoot-em-ups, strategy games, etc. This generally involves taking a game that received middling to poor reviews and claiming the mainstream gaming press failed to adequately give it the attention it deserved. Perhaps the game critics simply failed to understand the game or didn't devote enough time to it. Or perhaps only the hardest of the hardcore gamers are perceptive enough to realize the truth: that some obscure game that received bad reviews is actually far better than that popular game everyone is talking about. At its worst, the practice becomes a form or Armond White-ism.

Unfortunately, the above rant doesn't leave that much space to discuss Episode 43's content. Here it is in a nutshell: we have four adventure games, a few arcade ports, and a bunch or crap.

Deja Vu, with monsters.

The most notable games this episode are Jesus: Kyoufu no Bio Monster and Shadowgate. Both are menu-driven adventure games originally released on computers. Both involve wandering around confined, isolated environments.  Neither are known for having intuitive puzzles. Beyond that they differ quite a bit. Jesus is very character driven. The protagonist, a typical pink-haired, anime bad-ass, is frequently depicted onscreen, along with his jailbait keyboard-playing girlfriend and her neurotic pet robot.  In Shadowgate, your character is never shown and has virtually zero interaction with anyone else. In fact, there are hardly any other human beings in the game, other than a wizard who appears at one point with some advice.

You literally rock the monster to death!

Shadowgate loads you down with inventory - several menu screens worth - and then challenges you to figure out what to do with it. Most rooms require you to use an item in your inventory to open a door, kill a monster, or simply obtain another item.  Shadowgate never tells you how to use any of the items, so a lot of guesswork is required. Jesus, on the other hand, gives you very little inventory; instead you advance by examining your environment and trying out dialog options until you activate the hidden trigger to advance the plot. Also, you rarely (or perhaps never) die is Jesus. Shadowgate offers an astonishing array of deaths; there's a way to die on almost every screen.

You will probably see this a few times.

Shadowgate, being the first port of a computer adventure game on a console is fondly remembered in the US. In Japan, the Famicom version is considered to be kusoge. Once again, Magweasal helps explain this by translating some of the game's overwrought Japanese text.

Ankoku Shinwa: Yamato Takeru Densetsu

This is a very weird adventure game published by Tokyo Shoseki that was originally on the MSX. It's based on a manga and the story revolves around pre-Nara era Japan (essentially, it takes place in prehistorical or "legendary" Japan.). Despite there being an unofficial English translation the story is pretty hard to follow.

Hikari Genji: Roller Panic

This is the joker in the deck - an adventure game that stars a horrible, rollerskating Japanese boy-band.  I'll just repeat what I said the episode itself. This makes Noriko for the PC-Engine look like a work of genius.

Also, arcade ports!

Rolling Thunder

It's never explained why they need all those sandbags.

This is Shinobi before there was Shinobi, except it's by Namco, not Sega. The arcade game was pretty cool, but something is just not quite right about the home version. It's not terrible, its just that when playing Rolling Thunder I kind of wish I was playing Shinobi instead.

Afterburner II/Afterburner

Something was lost in the translation, it seems.

Speaking of Sega, for some stupid reason, someone thought it was a good idea to try to put Afterburner on the Famicom. On the postive side, this is the last Sega game that Sunsoft would port to the Famicom. Hopefully, we'll soon be seeing less stuff like this from Sunsoft and more stuff like Gimmick and Batman. Tengen released this on the NES in a slightly altered form.

Operation Wolf

Not the prettiest game on the NES

Maybe I'm just getting less patient with ports of arcade games that aren't rejiggered to make them into appropriate console games. Capcom and Konami have learned to do this. Taito apparently hasn't.  There's nothing wrong with Operation Wolf, aside from the fact that its simply a lamer version of the arcade game.

Marble Madness

March 1989 sees the debut NES games from Milton Bradley.  Naturally, they are developed by Rare.  Unlike Operation Wolf and Rolling Thunder, the NES Marble Madness looks almost exactly like the arcade game.  Unfortunately, Marble Madness without a trackball is an exercise in frustration.

John Elway's Quarterback

Again, there's nothing inherently awful about this game. In fact, if we hadn't just covered Tecmo Bowl, I might have been impressed with John Elway's Quarterback. However, timing is everything. This port was developed by Rare.

World Games

This is how you will feel playing World Games.

This is a port of a computer game instead of an arcade game. But do you want to guess who was responsible for this port? Rare, that's who. Yes, all three US-only games this episode were handled by Rare.

The rest:

Putt Putt Golf

A wacky golf game on the FDS from Pack-in-Video

Home Run Nighter: Pennant League!!

Another baseball game?! Oh, god, when will they stop? This one is Data East's attempt at a Family Stadium/RBI Baseball clone.

Family Pinball/Rock 'n' Ball

The umpteenth game in Namco's Family sports series takes a slightly different approach than most pinball videogames.  There are four pinball games found within. The most creative is a double-ended table in which gravity is reversed at the midpoint of the table. The least interesting is a pachinko/pinball hybrid!  Namco wasn't releasing NES games in the US at this point, so NTVIC stripped all the Namco references out and renamed it Rock 'n' Ball.

Jajamaru Ninpou Chou

This is the fifth title in Jaleco's Ninja Kun/Jajamaru series. The previous entries were action platformers, but Jaleco suddenly decided to switch genres, and Jajamaru Ninpou Chou turns out to be a Dragon Quest clone! Jaleco planned to release this in the US under the name Taro's Quest. The localization was at least partially completed, but Taro's Quest ended up being cancelled.  An unfinished beta cartridge later turned up and was made available online.

Bakushou!! Jinsei Gekijou

Another Jinsei game. That is, a video game based on the Milton Bradley's board game, The Game of Life.  Get used to Jinsei games, because they remain popular in Japan up to the present day.

Sakigake!! Otokojuku: Shippu Ichi Gou Se

What is going on with that guy's left leg?

A dreadful beat-em-up from Tose and Bandai, based on a hyper-violent anime series. It is, however, better looking than Hokuto no Ken.

Hayauchi Super Igo

An igo game from Kemco.

Matsumoto Tooru no Kabushiki Hisshou Gaku 2

The sequel to last year's stock market simulation game. The sequel is much expanded, and even features some unusual stuff for a simulation game, such as first person mazes.

SD Gundam World Gachapon Senshi - Scramble Wars Map Collection

This is not a new game, but instead a collection of new maps for Bandai's robot-filled strategy game.

What's up next? Good news for the handful of Chronsega fans out there. Chronsega Episode 7 will take us into 1989 and the end of the console's life in Japan. This epsisode won't take so long, I promise.