Space Pirate Collection IV came out yesterday

My fourth game and movie tribute album is now available at https://jessejacethomas.bandcamp.com/ The tracklist: Liu Kang Get Down (Mortal Kombat vs The Immortals Jurassic Muzak (Jurassic Park I and II SNES) The Greenest Path (Hollow Knight) Puzzle in the Pit (Mortal Kombat / Mortal Kombat Deception) Fight On (Killer Instinct) Arthur Breaks the Ice (Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts) Stoic Beat (The Shawshank Redemption) Blackout Gibraltar (Overwatch / Call of Duty: Black Ops 4) Shimmer in the Shrine (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild) What is it to Live (Ghost in the Shell)

Beating Metroid's first quest in under an hour

Last week I made up my mind to face a demon of my childhood — the Metroid (1986) on the NES. Intimidating, not because I couldn’t finish it, but because of something I thought I’d never be able to do: finish the first playthrough in under an hour to get the best ending.

When I played Metroid as a child, I went in basically blind. I didn’t have maps or strategy guides, so I went about it in a trial-and-error kind of way. I think I tried to make my own map at some point, but that in and of itself was a huge project; before I had finished mapping the game, I think I had moved on to some other difficult game like Bionic Commando and couldn’t be bothered to actually put my map to good use.

I did eventually finish the game in my childhood, but I did so in probably the least efficient manner possible. Metroid shows one of five different ending images of the main character depending on how long it takes the player to finish the game. The grand prize among these is awarded when the game is beat within 60 minutes, and shows a scientifically unlikely image of Samus standing on the barren surface of a featureless planetoid in a bikini and a pair of boots, happily waving at the player (presumably right before she asphyxiates and dies).

Silver Star < Medal of Honor < THIS

So Adult Me, now nearly 40 years old, went about re-creating the plan to achieve this ending. Normally I prefer visuals, i.e. maps, but Metroid’s world is so convoluted and repetitious, just looking at it in map form raises my blood pressure. In addition, having a map doesn’t really ensure the player will move through the game in the most time-efficient way possible. The non-linear nature of the game requires backtracking and allows flexibility, so even if you know where everything is, you still have to decide the order in which you do the tasks the game requires. So I decided to express my route through the game in the form of written steps.

A post shared by Jesse Thomas (@jessejacethomas) on Jul 31, 2018 at 6:40pm PDT

My favored route changed a few times in the course of this preparation, always in favor of efficiency. For example, don’t ask me why, but at first I had it in my mind that I needed to pick up the long beam before the bombs. No particular reason, other than that was how I’d always done it back in the day. But at some point I realized there’d be less backtracking if I got the bombs first. This change shaved a couple of minutes off my clear time, as did several other changes like it along the way.

As is the case with all of my NES gameplay videos, I made my attempt using an emulator. Normally emulators offer advantages, the greatest being save states. I don’t like using save states because it diminishes from the desperation and drama that were integral to the gaming experience of the 8-bit era. So, in this case, I only saved my game state at the points where the password screen came up (an equivalent action to writing down and using the password).

This, combined with my concern about how long it would take to grind to full health after getting a game over, meant I would commit to starting over from the beginning if I died on the Kraid boss fight, which I did several times, in attempts not shown in this video. Without the wave beam (which is technically an optional item) or the varia suit, Kraid is easily the hardest fight in the game. But saving Kraid until after visiting Norfair to get the varia suit costs valuable time, so I went into that fight less ready than I would have been had I not been aiming for the best ending. Even on the attempt recorded here, I came within one hit of dying before I beat him.

Happily, after beating Kraid the whole game gets easier. In a way, Kraid is the Harvey Weinstein of Metroid. His defeat kicks off a veritable “me too” movement allowing Samus to prosecute all her abusers to the full extent of the law. 

See? Literally the same. 

Yes, I did use the quick death input (the “up and A” trick) to jump to the password screen and save time while backtracking. In the end, I probably didn’t need to; my clear time (from selecting “START” to activating the final elevator, minus the time the game was paused) was about 48 minutes 40 seconds. I also abstained from using game-breaking glitches (like the “wall climb,” AKA the “door jump”) or sequence-breaking exploits (like crossing into Tourian without activating the bridge).

By the way, for all the advantages of using an emulator, there is one serious disadvantage. When Samus takes damage, she flickers. Because she flickers at a rate just slightly faster than the refresh rate of a 60 Hz monitor, she sometimes disappears completely after taking damage. When she takes a hit and falls into lava, this results in real frustration. Trying to guide an invisible Samus out of lava is like trying to flip an invisible 200-pound pancake while someone tickles you.

In the attempt that ended up in this video, there is a precarious period in the Norfair section of the game in which my health literally dropped to one, and stayed under 20 points for some time. (Apologies for the several minutes of low health warning alarm that resulted from this. That’s one of the most stress-inducing sounds in the history of video games.) But I wasn’t too worried about dying because, having recently gotten a password, I could have resumed play from right after having beaten Kraid and suffered no real setback. Luckily I enjoyed special treatment from the little "lava dragon" enemies, who unanimously agreed not to spit fireballs at me for some reason. Then I made it to the screw attack item, a major turning point for Samus’s offensive power, and reached the Miniboss Hideout II energy tank without dying. Finally, in Tourian, I had good luck in the form of one crucial missile drop from killing a metroid, which allowed me to survive the final room without running out of missiles.

Finally achieving Metroid's best ending made me want to revisit other tough games from my childhood. Bionic Commando, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Battletoads...games I cleared as a younger man, but have to muster up some patience to clear now. When I do, you can be sure I'll make videos.

Let's end GameStop

According to my records, I’ve visited the US about six times since I moved to Japan in 2003. No matter how many times I go back, I’m consistently stunned by the same thing every time: GameStop. Or rather, the fact that GameStop still exists.

GameStop really, really should have gone bankrupt by now. Capitalist Darwinism should have wiped its smug mug off the face of the Earth. I cannot begin to estimate the number of times I’ve seen a GameStop, thought to myself, “Hey, I wanna go in there,” and about five minutes later thought, “Why did I go in there?” I cannot recall a single visit to a GameStop store in my lifetime that did not result in disappointment, frustration or rage.

Why talk about this now? Q1 2017 has been a parade of negative publicity, from questionable policies to slipping share prices. This is in addition to what has been a years-long train of horror stories told by current and former employees and customers of the company that shed light on what is an increasingly dysfunctional organization. Bad press about GameStop is nothing new, and it never seems to go away.

From my perspective, the whole thing is amplified by a number of factors which, together, serve as ample evidence for the thesis statement, “GameStop is the worst ever and must be destroyed.”

1. In America, “pre-owned” means “in terrible condition.”

This isn't GameStop's fault, but it sure doesn't help their cause.

GameStop deals in pre-owned product, and in the US, this means they sell trash. Sorry for the awful generalization, but consumers in the US just do not take good care of their digital media. It’s like they’ve all got McDonald’s beef patties where their hands should be. I worked at Hollywood Video for a few years while I was a student and witnessed PlayStation 2 games being rented in brand-new condition, then being returned five days later looking like someone had used them to play Frisbee with the family dog. In what I estimate to be 30 percent of cases, a new DVD or disc-based game would be visibly damaged after one rental. It was as if our entire customer base consisted of three-year-old children who wore Freddy Krueger claws at all times. True story: A customer returned a copy of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 that had snapped clean in two, telling us that his child “threw it at the wall.”
To put my observation in context, in Japan, rental discs stay comparatively pristine for a long time (although I'm speaking only about Japanese rental DVDs, blue ray discs and music CDs; game rentals aren't a thing here.

For a GameStop customer, this prevailing culture of not giving a shit means that buying any pre-owned product from them is like Russian roulette – but with worse odds. And since I don’t get to try my purchases out until I get them back to Japan, returning them to the store isn’t an option. I guess I could ask the sales clerk to show me the disc before selling it to me, but that brings me to point number 2…

2. GameStop’s sales staff excel neither at customer service nor in their knowledge of games.

GameStop employees don't answer customer questions in the interest of guiding the customer to a purchase that will make the customer happy. Most of the time, they only answer questions in such a way as to show off their own esoteric knowledge and oh-so-valuable opinions about video games.

Customer: [Indicates a copy of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare for the Xbox One] Is this a good shooting game?Clerk: Well, it's fine, but if you really want a good shooting game, you should check out Timesplitters on the PlayStation 2.Customer: I haven't owned a PS2 in years.Clerk: Yeah, well, that's your loss.

Exactly who has benefited from this exchange? Nobody. The clerk has made public his superior knowledge of now-hard-to-find games that came out at the turn of the millennium, so good for him, I guess. He also, however, displayed zero knowledge on the game about which he was asked.

I was in a GameStop with my friend a few years ago and we came across the game Brütal Legend.

Friend: Have you played this? It's not bad.Me: No...is it the same genre as Darksiders? I wasn't so into that.Friend: Only a little, but it's more like...Clerk: [Standing at least five meters away] Darksiders is awesome and so is that game right there! You should absolutely buy it!

Serioiusly, what the hell? Nobody asked the clerk for his opinion, but he just couldn't contain himself. Either this "sales technique" has worked for him before, or he's got an irresistible compulsion to join every game-related conversation within earshot. And it's not like my friend and I were talking loudly. The GameStop guy would have had to eavesdrop on us pretty hard to hear what we were saying. Or maybe it would be easy for him to hear, because most GameStop stores don't have many obstructions on the store floor, which leads me to my third point:

3. GameStop stores waste unbelievable amounts of space

There's a big GameStop near my mother's house that has what I estimate to be about 1000 square feet of retail space. Guess what's in that store? Less than two and a half walls' worth of shelves. And that's all. In the middle, where a normal store manager would arrange point-of-purchase displays and island gondolas, this store had enough empty space for a pro wrestling ring. After looking at one wall's shelves, I felt like I needed to run to the opposite wall, climb up the shelves and do a flying elbow drop.

I visited this GameStop in 2013, saw how empty it was, and made a mental note that I shouldn't expect it to still be there come my next visit to the US. But upon visiting in 2015, the empty GameStop was still in business. And still empty.

GameStop is rarely the most affordable source of used games, but that point is underscored in this case; I can't help but feel like every product sold there has to have its price inflated slightly to compensate for the fact that the store's management don't know how to use space efficiently.

4. GameStop renders products impossible to resell

This is the absolute worst, and the reason I've resolved never to shop at GameStop ever again.

I tend to sell games that I've finished to used game shops. This keeps my collection from getting out of control and allows me to spend more money on other important things, like food for my daughter. (Quirky, I know. Feeding my child is sort of a hobby of mine.)

But good luck re-selling anything you purchased from a GameStop, because they apply price stickers indiscriminately. They'll put a price tag directly onto a game's case, defying you to peel it off. But don't peel it off, unless you like your game cases adorned with patches of sticky residue which rob them of their resale value, not to mention make them disgusting to handle and doom them to be perpetually caked with dust and garbage. On one infuriating occasion, I purchased a used copy of Marvel Ultimate Alliance that had a price tag applied not to the plastic case, but to the paper artwork inside the case. Obviously it would be impossible to peel the sticker off without ripping the artwork, which is why I still have the game despite no longer owning a PSP.

And when there's no case, they stick the price tag directly onto the game's instruction manual, or even directly onto the game media. In another PSP example, I bought a used copy of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories from the GameStop in Appleton, WI's Fox River Mall. Because there was no case, they had put the price tag directly onto the UMD, and then put that into a plastic baggie (which raises the question, why didn't they stick the price tag onto the baggie instead of onto the UMD?). With the price sticker on it, the UMD didn't fit properly into my PSP, so I peeled it off. Presto, one sticky, lint-magnet copy of GTA:LCS.

Maybe the store is called GameStop because it's the final stop for physical software resale, before the games are finally too messed up to change hands any more.

Again, I must contrast this with my experience in Japan, where second-hand games look like new, and can continue to look like new for as long as their owners take care of them. In this regard, visiting the US is like taking a time machine back to the barbarism of medieval times...a forgotten age when men beheaded each other for the slightest scorn, women were bought and sold like so much cattle and Gamecube discs didn't work because they were plastered with dirty glue and dead insects.

Put all this in the context of any other kind of retailer. You wouldn't buy from a furniture store whose cashiers second-guess your home decor choices because their manager told them to "push the leather sofas." You wouldn't buy from a record store whose discs are scratched and unplayable. You wouldn't buy from a bakery whose bagels are covered with stickers.

We all need to quit shopping at GameStop.

Space Pirate Collection II dropped last night

Space Pirate Collection II, my second album of covers and remixes, is available for download from my Bandcamp.com page. This time it's all game music tributes, from old (Mega Man II and Blaster Master) to new (Minecraft and Overwatch).

It took me such a long time to finish this album. I hope you all find it to your liking.

Happy meme year

2016 may have been the worst year since mankind first started talking about years, but it did give rise to an internet meme that I particularly enjoy: the "Me at the End of 2016" meme. You've probably seen a bunch of these; there's no shortage. But that won't stop me making my own.

OK, this one may be a bit esoteric. Long story short, the kid on the left and the sea monster on the right are the same guy.

That last one makes me want to cry.

Happy new year, everyone! May your 2017 be comparatively painless.

It's good to be the king

The greatest benefit to be had from completing the Bubblegum Hill event in Candy Crush Soda isn't a package of lollipop hammers or an hour of unlimited continues. It's a rare reminder of the player name you chose upon starting the game and then promptly forgot about.

Welcome to Castle Diabetes!

The time I made a hit video game

In 1996, I was finishing high school. As was typical of high school seniors at the time, my schedule had a lot of room for elective courses. One of the electives I took was Computer Math, a semester of learning basic programming principles. For the most part it wasn't thrilling (I had already taught myself the fundamentals of BASIC on the family Texas Instruments 99/4A as a younger boy, and this class didn't get into anything more advanced than subroutines and "if-then" statements), but the class's final project was the most engaging final project I would ever complete in my student life: a HyperCard dungeon.

HyperCard was a Mac-based programming tool that could best be described as an intranet of "cards," which could be hyperlinked and made interactive using buttons. A collection of cards that worked together for a purpose were called a "stack." Using a uniquely accessible and English-like scripting protocol called HyperTalk, users could create databases, presentation visuals and point-and-click adventures.

"Dungeons," my teacher called those.

This assignment had a checklist of things that needed to be present in a student's dungeon in order to earn points toward a grade for the project. Game elements like locked doors with keys, pitfalls, sound effects, animation and Easter eggs were all assigned point values and made part of the grading criteria. If memory serves, 50 of these points constituted a passing grade.

I went all out, creating the very best dungeon I could with the resources at my disposal. As a result, my dungeon scored 150 points, the maximum score my teacher was willing to award. It also became popular among students in other classes who found my dungeon on the Macs in the computer lab and started playing it when they were supposed to be typing essays about Lord of the Flies.

Today I used an OS9 emulator to open my old HyperCard dungeon (titled, The House of Death, Darkness, Decay and Doom) for the first time in close to twenty years. Unfortunately, the animations and sounds don't work well on a modern computer, and the text fields are all kinds of broken. It's also full of stuff that, even twenty years ago, was only funny to me and the stoner kid who sat next to me in Computer Math class. Stuff like a .WAV file of David Letterman saying "bubble wrap":



In the basement, there's a laundry room with a port in the wall that looks like a laundry chute...



...but when you inspect the laundry chute, it turns out to be a window to Team Behm Auto Mall (an eastern-Wisconsin used car dealership). After hearing my voice doing an unflattering impersonation of Mark Behm's nasal TV ad salutation ("Hi folks, Mark Behm, Team Behm!"), poor Mark and his dog are crushed by a dump truck that falls from the sky.



Whether or not you witness the death of Mark Behm has no bearing on your ability to reach the end of the dungeon. It's just something to do.

As you'd expect, it's rather cruel for a point-and-click adventure. Lots of doors and clickable objects lead to instant death, regardless of the logic involved:

The game's "climax" comes when the player uses a computer terminal to "decrease the power" of the dungeon's evil proprietor.

Better than Metal Gear, anyway.

For all its limitations, HyperCard was one of my favorite things about the Mac OS Classic environment. I continued using it, mostly to make random text generators for my own amusement, all the way up until the advent of OS X. This one created fictional pro-wrestling match summaries:



And this one was called Insult Me:



But don't just take my word for it. Check out this video of the Fashionable Eyewear Brothers showing off HyperCard's raw computing power. Personally I think the whole thing would feel a little more authentic with a musical underpinning of Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now."

Internet trouble and Nishikin

You may have noticed an increasing gap in between episodes of Fight Meee! That's because recently the quality of my internet connection at home has taken an unexplained turn for the worse. When I go online to look for matches, I see loads of green, four-bar connections. Then I get into the match and lag takes over. The latency is so bad, in fact, that it ends most matches after less than 20 seconds, often with an error message telling me that I "have been disconnected from Xbox Live."

One theory is that a rash of earthquakes over the last week and a half may have disrupted internet services for much of the population (a theory supported by the fact that some of my gaming friends have also experienced difficulties). The latency isn't bad enough to ruin everyday internet use, or even some online games (Destiny has been much better by comparison), but it completely ruins Street Fighter.

This would only be a minor annoyance, except that apparently Ultra Street Fighter IV's netcode is blaming me for the disconnections. My "disconnect rate," which was 0% until very recently, has suddenly jumped:

This unjust mark of shame weighs on me like a scarlet letter. I have prided myself on sportsmanship, and now, thanks to crappy internet service, I am branded a rage quitter. Is there no justice?

Equally troubling is that, in reaction to this sudden trend of mid-fight disconnection the game thinks I'm causing, I have been punished by having all my PP (player points, which measure overall proficiency) taken away:



Not that I had that many to lose in the first place.

Thankfully, my hard-earned BP (battle points, which are earned per character) are intact, but it still stings a little to know that I've been punished for something that isn't my fault. At any rate, Fight Meee! will return when the internet situation gets better.

Now, on to happier news.

Last night I had just finished work and was heading to Shinjuku Station when I crossed paths with none other than Nishikido Hiroshi, better known as Nishikin, Japan's top Blanka player in USFIV (currently ranked the #36 USFIV player in the world according to SRK). Commence geek-out.

He seemed a little surprised to have been recognized and/or greeted*, and even more surprised when I told him I was a fan and fellow Blanka player. He told me he was on his way to a bowling alley (weird small talk, but OK), and asked me if I ever play in arcades. After a brief discussion about the arcade (and how much I lose there), he told me to look for him at Taito Station if I ever wanted a game.

Maybe he was just being polite, but if I ever see Nishikin at Taito Station, I will absolutely mirror match him. It will be an honor to lose to the best.

* This is the second time in a month that I've spoken with someone with a connection to Street Fighter who was surprised to have been recognized and/or greeted. In May, I rode the Saikyo Line with some staff members from UDON Comics, including founder Eric Ko (foreground) and artist Vostalgic (Long Vo, background right), who were just returning from a meeting with Capcom in Osaka.

There's no yoga in the jungle

A month ago Destiny came out. That's the reason I haven't posted any Ultra Street Fighter IV videos in a while. It's also the reason my Xbox Live Blanka ranking has plunged below 500th.

This match was my second against Diamond M2's Dhalsim. The first was a loss; he kept me zoned out with that long-range fierce punch all day. I learned from that loss that my priority should be to crowd Dhalsim as persistently as possible.

Round 1 was especially satisfying because I managed to hit him with a hop-Ultra I at the end. Since Blanka's charge-dependent Ultras can't be comboed into, any method of tricking the opponent into hitting a button at the wrong time is gold.

Japan's Monster Hunter honeymoon may be over

I've monitored (and participated in) Japan's love affair with Monster Hunter for most of the franchise's lifespan. From the series's ubiquitous handheld presence on Tokyo commuter trains, I've been conditioned to assume that nothing could break the spell that the "hunting action" phenomenon has woven over Japan's gaming public.

But history has taught us that, if anything is capable of souring gamers' opinions of Capcom, it's Capcom. More cynical fans of franchises like Street Fighter and Biohazard / Resident Evil have accused the publisher of squeezing money out of its customers by releasing streams of paid DLC and updating popular titles piecemeal, rather than putting an earnest effort into creating new games. Of course, Capcom isn't the only game company that does this, but its recent treatment of Street Fighter IV has been a particularly sore subject with some fans.

Now the public has turned a critical eye on Monster Hunter 4G, which came out last weekend (and which many are calling a small update to Monster Hunter 4, albeit for a ¥5800 ($54.45 US) price tag. Customer reviews on Amazon.co.jp have been brutal so far:

As of Friday afternoon (Japan time), the game's customer review average is only about 2.38 stars out of 5 (after 428 reviews, more than a third of which garnered a score of 1 out of 5 stars). This is in direct contrast to the previous 3DS title in the series, Monster Hunter 4, whose ratings bar graph looks like 4G's bar graph inverted.

Players cite a number of reasons for being dissatisfied, but a recurring theme in the reviews is the overblown difficulty level. Capcom often allows gamers to port player data from one MonHan game to the next, so that seasoned players don't have to feel like they're always starting over. But in order to challenge these players, the game apparently features quarry described by reviewers as too fast, too strong and cheap. Quests that in previous iterations were described as "challenging" have now become stressful, particularly when playing solo.

Many customers also express dissatisfaction with the amount of content. There is a consensus that the amount of value offered by MH4G deserves a price tag of about ¥1500, not ¥5800, and should have been marketed as a DLC expansion to MH4.

I'd offer my opinion but I'm not a professional game critic and the Amazon reviews have scared me enough to stop me spending my money on the game. And yes, Famitsu loved MH4G (giving it straight 9's in their Cross Review system for a total of 36 out of 40), but I haven't valued Famitsu's opinion for years, nor should anyone.

I repeat, Famitsu is garbage.

Non-revelation

A lil' (that's how you type "little" when you want to come across as cute and colloquial) update for yas (that's how to you type "y'all" when you don't want to sound Texan):

Apparently the King of Fighters Angel cosplayer I shot at last autumn's Tokyo Game Show was none other than Nonsummerjack (Non for short), a professional cosplay model who is famous among people who would know who somebody like Nonsummerjack is.

This was brought to my attention by a reader who wishes to remain anonymous, probably because he doesn't want to be identified as someone who would know who somebody like Nonsummerjack is.

Yup, that's her all right.

I now have the unfortunate distinction of being able to identify a cosplayer by name. Not only does this drop me down to a new depth in the Abyss of Geek Misery, knowing her name means I can no longer rightfully greet her with the command, "POSE FOR ME, WOMAN."

If I see her at the next TGS, I'll say, "POSE FOR ME, 'NON' WOMAN."

Viva la Vita

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my gaming habits have undergone a shift away from console platforms toward handheld ones since the birth of my daughter. My Playstation Vita and 3DS, once merely distractions for my daily commute, have now become my preferred medium. Being able to play without tying up the TV, as well as play for short periods without having to sit through a console's lengthy startup, proves attractive for a new parent.

But since the release of the Vita, I've run across article after article calling Sony's current-generation handheld words like "embattled" and "struggling." Whether the blame is pinned on disinterested consumers, smartphones and tablets encroaching on the games market or a lack of third-party software support, the Vita has been branded as a lame horse in the US.

The concept didn't really hit home for me until I went shopping in Wisconsin last month, eager to find post-holiday deals on Vita games (which are particularly convenient by virtue of their lack of region coding). I visited two Target stores, both of which had the exact same selection of only six Vita titles in stock. Gamestop had similarly sparse pickings. And one Best Buy store I visited seemed to have scrapped their Vita section completely. It was as if retailers were under the impression that the Playstation 4 would somehow replace the Vita (which it won't, nor was it ever intended to).

Maybe I wouldn't have been so surprised at this, had I not spent the last decade in Japan, where the Vita is comparatively very healthy. Every electronics retailer carries a wide selection of titles -- and rightly so, because the Vita's Japanese library is much bigger than its American counterpart. In comparison to the barren desert that is the Vita scene in the US, in Japan it's like an oasis full of palm trees, free beer and bikini models. What ever the cause, it would appear that the Vita has seen very different days on either side of the Pacific.

Which brings me back to the question of what's causing the Vita's demise.

If the ever-increasing presence of mobile game developers at Tokyo Game Show is any indicator, then the aforementioned encroachment of smartphone and tablet games on the market is the primary culprit. And this is unhappy news for people like me, who prefer to play games on machines that were built for playing games. As fun as it is to kill five minutes with a few stages of Angry Birds on my iPhone, limiting my game library to titles that can be played with only touchscreen and accelerometer controls is not a bright picture of "the future of gaming."

Busy holiday weekend: Tokyo Game Show

Sunday I attended Tokyo Game Show. My relationship with TGS has been a strained one. Since my first time attending in 2005, the event has seemed to reduce itself in some way or another, ever so slightly with each passing year. This year, I found the whole thing very tiresome.

One reason is that the crowds get bigger every year, but the event itself does not. My hopes were higher this year because the floor plan had been expanded to use Exhibition Hall 9 of Makuhari Messe (to house the cosplay area, some shops and for some reason, a Konami booth very far removed from the rest of the attractions.

But what I had heard was misleading. This year the cosplay area, which used to consist of the nicely shaded gap between two halls, was an even more cramped outdoor area beyond Hall 9, with the dressing area taking up more room than the Xbox booth (no exaggeration). It boggles my mind because, assuming the dressing room was full, there was not room for all the cosplayers. And by putting all the cosplayers outside in the sun, it seems they are just tempting heat stroke (not to mention the frustration caused by half of all photography subjects being back lit by the afternoon sun).

Why am I even complaining about this? I used to make fun of cosplayers. Well, with Tokyo Game Show's ridiculous crowds, meager demo offerings (seriously, most of the games you can "preview" have already been released. What's the point?) and an ever-increasing amount of space being taken up by mobile game developers that don't interest me in the slightest, taking pictures of girls dressed like fictional characters becomes the main draw. Unfortunately, it's also the main draw for a lot of dorks with gigantic cameras who really take their time shooting pictures, so waiting in line to snap the cosplayer you want involves the science of careful subject selection:

Let's say you want to photograph a girl in a very well-executed costume of Xiaoyu from Tekken. You have to line up and wait for half an hour behind the world's slowest photographers. But you don't want to jump on the end of any line that's too long, or guess what happens. Xiaoyu gets heat stroke and has to take a break, which means the line disperses and your waiting has been for nothing. Your only recourse is "stealing" photos from your place in line by shooting a model while she's posing for someone else. It makes you feel dirty.

This whole event makes you feel dirty. Anyway, on with the pictures.

It's not TGS without at least one Tifa.

K (right) was wearing some suspicious flesh-colored support garments beneath his jacket. Either he's a drag king, or he's hiding a very un-KOF-like amount of chest hair.

Sometimes you get lucky. This was a "stolen" photo, but both subjects looked right at me. The girl on the left is the aforementioned Xiaoyu. I remember her from last year.

I'm not gonna lie. I have no idea what character this is.

This guy was a good sport. He gave me the choice of upward, downward or straight ahead for his kamehameha pose.

Grand Theft Auto V impressions

What I like about the game so far:

A lot of things that I've liked about previous entries in the series. The story is engrossing, the writing is top notch and the gameplay is, for the most part, fun and challenging without being frustrating.

The soundtrack. As opposed as I usually am to licensed soundtracks in video games, this franchise nails it every time. When I heard Jane Child on the in-game radio, I involuntarily flashed back to being a sixth grader carrying a Trapper Keeper full of fluorescent-colored folders.

The little things. A pleasantly surprising amount of detail has gone into things that often get glossed over in game development. The spray of dirt behind a car in the desert is a nice touch that immediately comes to mind. And the game is full of working props handled by characters during cutscenes: maps that fold, backpacks that open and close, pants that drop. Many games use slight of hand (read: convenient camera angles) to avoid actually showing a character putting something into a briefcase or the like, but not this game.

The police in this game don't mess around. Anything more than Wanted Level 1 and you need to work considerably harder (and more creatively) than in previous installments to lose the heat. I found out the hard way that if they're angry enough, the police will follow you into your own "safe" house!

Right after I took this, I suddenly gained Wanted Level 2 and got shot for standing on top of a parked police car.

Scenery. This game seems to have dipped a shovel into Jerry Bruckheimer's Bottomless Barrel of CSI Miami sunsets and appropriated a bunch of them for its own purposes. This is probably the first video game I've seen accurately emulate the appearance of moonlit clouds. And, although I'm not sure why it rains so often in a game that supposedly takes place in southern California, they've done a nice job on the lightning effects, too.

Camera phone. With so much to see, it would have been a crime not to bring back the camera phone function. The Social Club component adds further utility (allowing players to access their in-game camera roll, as well as other players'). And who doesn't love taking selfies?

Driving dialog. This probably isn't a feature you'd mention on the back of a video game's box art, but I really like how GTAV treats dialog that happens between characters while driving. Unlike in previous games, now if you experience a collision while talking with an NPC, there is a moment where the character(s) react to the accident -- usually with some colorful combination of expletives -- and then pick the conversation right back up, sometimes in mid-sentence. Somewhere out there is a very competent (and probably under-appreciated) audio designer.

It's huge! All the hype about how big the map is didn't really hit me until I started playing and actually immersed myself in it. But...

What I don't like so far:

It's huge! Grateful as I am to have such a big playground, it's easier than you'd think to find yourself stuck in the middle of nowhere -- especially if you're easily distracted. One minute you're trying to lose the police, then the next you're like, "Is that an observatory?" And then, "Hey, look...deer!" And then you hit a rock and wreck your car, realizing only too late that you've been off-roading for ten minutes and cannot call yourself a taxi.

It's clumsy. All three protagonists are great at driving, flying, swimming and shooting. But not running. And certainly not jumping or climbing. I've been grateful for the addition of the climbing mechanic since Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas but in this game it doesn't always work the way you expect. Too many times I have pushed the jump button with the intention of climbing over a wall, and instead end up watching my character sprawl on the ground in pain because he jumped into the wall.

Ugly character face models. I guess we were all spoiled by L.A. Noire. Each game since then has been underwhelming in its approach to realism in human characters, particularly in the face. It's not enough to detract from the gameplay, but seeing characters close-up during cut scenes and being startled by how gruesome they look is never fun. (Note: When enjoying a private dance at a strip club, do not look at the dancer's face for this reason.)

Not all the optional activities are fun. I'm not saying that previous GTAs were much better in this regard...but tennis? Come on. Nobody plays tennis.

I knew Dragon's Crown was going to be good

And that's all I have to say about that.

Xbox One: Nobody likes it

Having recently become a father, it's inevitable that my gaming habits change at least a little. For example my Xbox 360, which sounds like a chainsaw when it's running, is too noisy to play while Daughter is sleeping. Furthermore, not wanting Daughter to grow into a teenage sociopath who cusses at total strangers through a headset means not playing Call of Duty when she's nearby.

As such, it should be no surprise that my habits have seen a trend toward portable gaming as of late. My daily commute on the Saikyo Line is essentially a forty-minute hole in my schedule, begging to be filled with Angry Birds or what have you. Still, as a gamer for the past thirty years, how can I not be excited when it's time for new home consoles to come out? Ever since the North American release of the Super Nintendo in 1991, my instincts have told me that a new console's release is a rare thing, and a big event. (The only console I ever bought on the day of its release was the PlayStation 2 in 2000. I was in university. I skipped half a day of classes to "make sure it worked.")

So why am I completely unimpressed by everything I have heard so far about the Xbox One?

Stupid forever.

Granted, plenty of bloggers before me have expressed their disdain for Microsoft's next platform, so I doubt this post will shatter anybody's world. But I can't resist sharing my perspective on Microsoft's (horrifically botched) marketing of this upcoming console. Yes, it's a bad move on Microsoft's part to lock each copy of a title to the first console it's played on (the so-called "used game fee" controversy). I won't spend much time on that issue, but let's just say the used game lock alone is enough to stop me buying the Xbox One. But wait, there's more.

Starting on the day of the Xbox One reveal, Microsoft's Xbox newsletter started bombarding recipients with ill-conceived snippets of copy singing the praises of this big, ugly monolith of a machine. First came a message titled Xbox One: What It Is, which contained ingenious strands of advertising prose such as:

Xbox One delivers an entertainment experience like nothing before. Its innovative technology is rivaled only by its iconic design. Sharp corners and clean lines make for a sleek, modern console that complements any decor.

Apparently "iconic design" means IT'S A RECTANGLE. It has lines and corners. Sharp ones. Pro-tip, Microsoft. Next time make your game machine triangular. Triangles have even sharper corners.

As for complementing any decor, well...we'll see about that.

The quintessential American living room

A week later I found another newsletter in my inbox, this time with the title Xbox One: What It Does. My imagination ran wild at the though of what this beast could do. Maybe something like, "It cuts your fingers with its sharp corners."

From the moment you say "Xbox On," you'll be instantly recognized and welcomed by a personalized home screen with all your favorite games, apps, and content. 

Xbox One was designed for today's fast-paced lifestyle. It wakes up instantly when you say, "Xbox On," and even turns on your TV.

Great. So my wife and I will be setting up the entertainment center and I'll say, "Let's put the Xbox on the bottom shelf," and it will turn on my TV. Or my neighbor will be cutting lumber with a chainsaw and I'll say, "Do you hear that? Is the Xbox on?" and it will turn on my TV. Yeah, this is a great leap forward in convenience. And that's assuming the speech recognition is accurate. What if I say, "Hey honey, there are sex-bots on sale at Don Quijote?"

Apart from being a big, heavy, sharp-cornered, voice-activated remote control for your TV, Xbox One also wants very badly to be part of your television-viewing experience, despite there being no need for such a thing:

Connect your cable or satellite box to Xbox One, and watch all your favorite television shows right through the console. All your favorite channels. All your favorite shows. All with the sound of your voice.

WHAT'S THE POINT OF THAT? Adding an unnecessary "middle man" to my cable TV setup doesn't enhance convenience. It's like saying, "I'm going to travel from Italy to France, right through China." Unless I want my Law & Order marathon interrupted by a Red Ring of Death, what's my incentive to change a living room dynamic that's been impossible to improve since the early 80s?

The early 80s in summary

The sense I get is that Microsoft is trying again to do something they tried and failed to do with the original Xbox and the Xbox 360: make it the center of the household entertainment environment. But that goal in and of itself is archaic in a day and age where the living room is no longer the center of household entertainment. People like me, who watch more media on their computers than they do on TV are seemingly an unimportant segment of the public in Microsoft's marketing strategy. That is, unless Microsoft's goal is to stop people buying their computers, which I doubt (although if it were, that would explain a lot about Windows).

Microsoft's Xbox One marketing makes numerous incorrect assumptions about the market into which they plan to introduce it. They're going to need one hell of a killer app to win back all the customers they've lost with the Xbox One reveal. What's that killer app going to be?

Dead Rising: Zombie Nunnery?

Lego Halo?

DOA Extreme Sexual Harassment (better with Kinect™)?

Probably that last one.