Yesterware

I've had a couple of days to get acquainted with Elder Scrolls IV, and I must say I'm very very impressed. Until I saw Oblivion listed as a release title for the XBOX 360 I never gave Elder Scrolls much thought. I usually go in for more mainstream fair like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and .hack. When the promise of having an RPG at the 360 launch evaporated, I got impatient and picked up a "Greatest Hits" version of Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. After wandering around cluelessly for about 45 minutes and getting pwnd by a Mud Crab, I put it down and didn't touch it again for two weeks. But the hype over ESIV forced me to give ESIII a second chance and I was glad that I did. After overcoming a steep learning curve, a cryptic menu system, and awkward battle controls, I was hooked. I had been playing ESIII for around 50 hours by the time that ESIV came out. I've been playing ESIV for about 25 hours now and I feel like I've only scratched the surface.

My Neighbor Totoro (original release shown left): This has been a favorite of mine for a few years now. It was released twice on DVD. The first time was before Disney contracted with Studio Ghibli (the home of the celebrated anime director, Hayao Miyazaki). As with a lot of anime directed at younger children, the original release was hacked to pieces and recolored, because evidently North American children are far too stupid to like a cartoon if it is letterboxed and doesn't look like a bowl of fruit loops. To put it another way, when 20th Century Fox brought the film stateside, the left and right edges of the picture were hacked off to produce a "Full Screen" version of the film, the color intensity was dramatically increased, destroying or obscuring much of the subtle detail, and "edge enhancement" was applied to the picture resulting in permanant NTSC dot crawl . About the best thing I can say for the original release was that I loved the English voice track.

To kick off my vacation, I saw a couple of movies tonight, and here's what I thought. V for Vendetta Rated R The story was that of an imaginative revolutionary, determined to wake up the sheepish masses that had allowed the UK to become a totalitiarian regime. Laced with patriotic sentiment, classical references to Shakespere and the like, a strong dose of philosophy, a healthy dash of intrigue, and some interesting action sequences, the movie delivers a well-rounded experience. Although the enigmatic main character V wears a mask, that becomes more of a smokescreen, or a symbolic reference rather than the object of mystery it first seems to be, very reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan's work. Although it involved an Australian (Hugo Weaving) and an American (Natalie Portman) playing the roles of British citizens it was very believable. (I suspect that if I were actually British I might feel differently about that:) Hugo was particularly impressive in his flawless delivery

I make no bones about the fact that I'm a Nintendo fanboy. They've made some boneheaded moves before, but by and large they seem to know what they're doing, and they really are the only ones pioneering anything in the industry. Sony's most innovative contribution so far has been the eye-toy, but that was what, 8 or 10 years after Nintendo releaced the Game Boy Camera? In my quest for who to place the blame on for the horrific desecration of Tales of Phantasia I contacted my favorite import game store, National Console Support to ask if the Japanese GBA release of ToP was this horrible. Here's the response I received: Hi Samson, yes we were also disappointed by the changes in the USA version but we confirm that the Japanese Tales of Phantasia includes the opening score from the Super Famicom version. Regards, NCS, Inc That coupled with this response that I received from Namco: Thank you for contacting Namco Bandai's Customer Support Department. Please contac

After my tainted start in ToP for the GBA, I persevered and tried to give it a fair shot. Every other SNES/SFC game translated for the GBA (at least all that I have played) have been superior to the original to some degree. Although purists may debate whether they like graphical updates, such as those in the Super Mario Advance series, the fact is that the GBA is much more powerful than the SNES/SFC, memory chips are dirt cheap compared to the roughly fifteen years ago that ToP was originally released, and the fact the game was already finished - the features were already there for crying out loud- make any downgrade completely inexcusable. After I got past the atrocity of replacing the opening song with some uninspiring tune, I began to notice other things, like the fact that your character's image is no longer reflected in the water when he stands over it. This effect was used extensively in the original game, and added to the polish that really made it special. And the fact t

I've always loved the "Tales" games, ever since I played Tales of Destiny for the first time. I always found the odd mix of turn-based and action role-playing. The graphics were always inspiring and pleasant to behold, and the music was just top-notch. It didn't take me long to discover that Tales of Destiny was not the first game in the series, just the first one to make it to North America. The first game, Tales of Phantasia for the Super Famicom, was nothing short of a technical marvel. It was a Super Nintendo game with voice. But what really wowed me was the first time I fired the game up and was treated to the unbelievable opening song, it was upbeat, inspiring, catchy and it had voice. For those of you who joined the gaming scene in the Playstation days, you may not see this as anything special, but back in the 16-bit cartridge days, it was just unheard of. I have had that enchanting and beautiful opening song in my head ever since the first time I played