Friday, September 26, 2008
Smiletime Factory
Feelin' fine indeed.
Today was the PS3 release date of the impossibly retro-faithful Mega Man 9. I grabbed the demo version, started it up and couldn't help but grin, grin, GRIN like a imbecile. It's something that has to be seen to be believed, and even with "2008" written on the title screen I still can't believe that this game wasn't made fifteen years ago. I know there's no logical explanation for this, but playing a obsolete-looking sprite-based platform game on a new, widescreen TV was delightfully incongruous. The whole point in investing in HDTV is for higher-resolution entertainment, and yet I sat there and felt nothing but sunshine in my heart while staring at blocky, pixelated graphics.
The only downside is that so far, the demo isn't much fun to play because it's way too hard. While all the press materials have insisted this "neo-nostalgic" (new word I probably just made up) piece of art is supposed to brings gamers back to the golden age of Mega Man 2 (the really good one, for those not in the know), here's the thing: I played Mega Man 2 when it was new and not some magical gold-standard of Nintendo Past. I played it and played it and played it some more, beating it many times over for the fun of it. If MM2 was as hard as MM9's demo, I would not have played it much; no one would have, certainly not the 12 year-old me with other games at my disposal. So MM9 appears to be purposely harder than it needs to be to appeal to the false perception of modern gamers that the old NES games were really difficult, and that simply wasn't always the case. While there were plenty of hard games back then that I kept playing for reasons I can't explain now (Ninja Gaiden 1 & 2, I'm looking at you), MM2 was not one of those games.
But never mind all that - here's the real treat of my evening. My friend Chad, a man I met at Kansai Gaidai a few years ago, just arrived in Japan this summer via the JET Programme. He's started blogging and he decided to make a video tribute to...me. Yes, me. Please, go to his site and take a look. It made me very happy, perhaps it will make you happy too.
Other than that, I've got new TV shows from the States to watch and we're going to the movies tomorrow! Consider me entertained, for now.
Today was the PS3 release date of the impossibly retro-faithful Mega Man 9. I grabbed the demo version, started it up and couldn't help but grin, grin, GRIN like a imbecile. It's something that has to be seen to be believed, and even with "2008" written on the title screen I still can't believe that this game wasn't made fifteen years ago. I know there's no logical explanation for this, but playing a obsolete-looking sprite-based platform game on a new, widescreen TV was delightfully incongruous. The whole point in investing in HDTV is for higher-resolution entertainment, and yet I sat there and felt nothing but sunshine in my heart while staring at blocky, pixelated graphics.
The only downside is that so far, the demo isn't much fun to play because it's way too hard. While all the press materials have insisted this "neo-nostalgic" (new word I probably just made up) piece of art is supposed to brings gamers back to the golden age of Mega Man 2 (the really good one, for those not in the know), here's the thing: I played Mega Man 2 when it was new and not some magical gold-standard of Nintendo Past. I played it and played it and played it some more, beating it many times over for the fun of it. If MM2 was as hard as MM9's demo, I would not have played it much; no one would have, certainly not the 12 year-old me with other games at my disposal. So MM9 appears to be purposely harder than it needs to be to appeal to the false perception of modern gamers that the old NES games were really difficult, and that simply wasn't always the case. While there were plenty of hard games back then that I kept playing for reasons I can't explain now (Ninja Gaiden 1 & 2, I'm looking at you), MM2 was not one of those games.
But never mind all that - here's the real treat of my evening. My friend Chad, a man I met at Kansai Gaidai a few years ago, just arrived in Japan this summer via the JET Programme. He's started blogging and he decided to make a video tribute to...me. Yes, me. Please, go to his site and take a look. It made me very happy, perhaps it will make you happy too.
Other than that, I've got new TV shows from the States to watch and we're going to the movies tomorrow! Consider me entertained, for now.
Feedback:
コメントがあります？ Type something, please. It's less work for me.
When leaving comments, please don't remain Anonymous. Click on "Other" and pick a name!
Be sociable! No sign-up is required!
When leaving comments, please don't remain Anonymous. Click on "Other" and pick a name!
Be sociable! No sign-up is required!
unpaid advertising...I'm no sell out!
