There’s this “Video Game System” called the Mattel Hyperscan. It’s basically this video system that Mattel marketed as a toy, for young teenagers who were too old for Yugioh, but too young to be trusted with expensive video game systems of the day. It was a relatively low-spec system, and Mattel discontinued it about a year or so after it was released. The system had no copy-protection, so there was some interest from the homebrew community, but so far not much has come to fruition.

Personally, I feel this is a very bad system. However, like a lot of bad systems, they all have their unique charm. This one had a pretty decent controller, and a cool card-based saving system. Each game came packaged with cards that had an RFID in them. Let’s say I’m playing Spiderman, and I want to load a bonus for spiderman for a certain level, I just scan the card and I have extra health! Yippee! Other games would require you to have them, in order to load scenarios, characters, and all that. In some instances, if you scanned a character card, you would scan it after you were done and it would save the character’s progress.

If you care to watch, I also made a video that shows you what the system looks like, and how it all works. I can’t do gameplay footage though. There’s other youtube videos for that though!

*DISCLAIMER*

Yes, I’m aware that Persona 4 is not the last PS2 game. However, I’m going to be bold and say that it’s the last good PS2 game to come out given the system’s current release schedule.

With that said, I was not looking forward to Persona 4 AT ALL. In 2007, I bought Persona 3. In early 2008, I had to buy Persona 3 FES. Then all of a sudden I hear about Persona 4 coming out at the end of the year here in the states. It’s not like they’re pumping them out overseas, I know Persona 3 had been out for quite some time in Japan before it was released here. I didn’t like the art style, the cast of characters, the colors, or the fact it was coming out so early and I hadn’t even started on Persona 3 FES. Sounds like a personal problem, I suppose.

I bought the game anyways. I guess I’m just a fanboy, or something. I have to say that it’s a lot better than Persona 3. That game was fun, but it was very constrictive. In Persona 3, you were bound by a calendar, the moon’s phases, and how healthy your character was. In Persona 4, you’re bound by the weather. That’s pretty much it. There’s also quite a few cosmetic changes. While the concept is still the same, they’ve implemented it in way that just feels right. A lot of little changes can go a long way, I guess.

The story is a bit different, as well. Murders are happening in your town you recently moved to, and you somehow get involved. I don’t want to spoil it, but the main plot of the game is this land inside of a TV where most of the plot happens. This is where you’ll do the bulk of your fighting. It’s not like Persona 3 where you just go up a tower the whole time. There are still social links, where you go and meet friends, and say the right things to them in order to power up. You can hold jobs, trade in raw materials to make new items, read books, and other things you couldn’t do in Persona 3.

Persona 4 is a pretty solid game. A lot of RPGs these days get flack for being for being “turn-based” or old-school or something. Persona 4 might not be your modern action-rpg, but it’s definitely modern. It fulfills my needs, to say the least. Even though it’s on the PS2, it actually looks pretty good. I’m proud to have this game in my collection.

The second episode of facepalm deals with Sega’s 32x add-on system. It kinda came out at a bad time, and failed pretty damn hard. The Saturn was already out in Japan. So nobody really wanted to waste their time with it. Some say that failures such as the 32x led to the impending demise of Sega’s hardware making altogether.

Not to say it was a ‘bad’ system. It had quite a bit of potential. Some games actually look pretty good on it. It’s just sorta ugly, and a whole wrong time/wrong place sort of situation.

Here’s our video for Facepalm Ep. 2 - 32x:

This is the first part of *facepalm*: a series of articles in which I discuss things that make you slap your forehead with your palm. Embarassing things. Failed things. Yeah they make you cringe to think about them, but I’m giving them a fair chance. An objective look at the things society scoffs at and wishes didn’t exist. So what better subject to start out with than:

It’s been maybe a month now since I picked up the virtual boy, and I still only have two games for it. Mario’s Tennis and Wario Land. That’s perfectly fine though, I don’t think I’d want to subject myself to the other games. I’ve heard they were pretty bad.

So in a nutshell, the virtual boy is a strange mixture of a console and a portable system. It doesn’t really plug in to your TV, it’s just a huge visor thing you put your head into. There’s a screen for each eye, giving the illusion of 3D for some games. The controller is pretty clunky looking — and it takes six AA batteries. Hey! Just like the Game Gear!

Mario’s Tennis is actually kinda fun, but it’s just tennis with Mario characters. I give it credit though, because it actually feels like you’re on a real court seeing the player in front of you. Instead of most tennis games where it’s just an overhead view.

Warioland is pretty cool too. It’s a very solid platforming game. It attempts to use the 3D effects by having two planes objects can go between. Sometimes you can jump between the foreground and background. Which, is actually an interesting concept, because most 2D games only give you the option of jumping higher or lower.

The Virtual Boy is a goofy system that failed miserably. But if you ever come across one, I suggest picking one up. There are a handful of games that are actually kinda fun for it.

There is always something to be said about failed systems. Lately, I’ve been looking into bad systems. Well, in a sense that they weren’t supported for nearly as long as their competitors.

Hi there. I’m indexing certain parts of the Black Flower Music netlabel portion onto the blog. Essentially, I’m archiving the albums using a podcast plugin on the blog. You’ll be able to add an RSS feed to your favorite aggregator and get all the fancy updates of the netlabel that way.

All-encompassing BFM netlabel RSS feed:

The most recent split, already has a page on the blog: Say No More Tongues and Lolita Vibrator Torture - splitx4 ep

 Say No More Tongues and Mystified - VS split: Download (8)
 Say No More Tongues and METEK - Say It (collaboration): Download (1)
 [Over The Counter] - Prescription 1 (compilation): Download (1)

This game is one such title that needed much reflection before writing an impressions article. I’ve had this game since October 21st, about a week before the general public got their hands on it. It had been recalled due to an infamous track featuring lyrics from the Quran. So, while I had my hands on this game there was no online. I actually got to sit down and play the main story, and focus on the standalone product this game is. I get to focus on the community product later on.

First, the standalone game is fairly simple. It’s basically just a platforming game with a shallow story that isn’t too terribly enticing at all. One of the gameplay’s redeeming value is that it can be very interactive. There are things to grab, jetpacks, puzzles to solve, danger, and a motivation to keep playing. So I suppose the lack of a decent story is made up by challenging levels.

The game has a lot of concepts. One of the major ones in the standalone game is collecting things. In each level, there are countless of different items to gather for your inventory. Whether it be stickers, gear, costumes, or even vehicles. It can be a chore to go back and play through each level to collect all the items, and some require you to have two players. Some of the later levels may even require four players. This is generally a non-issue, assuming you have internet for online co-op.

Once you’re done with the Story mode, you’re ready for almost anything. The real depth of this game lies within its custom levels. After collecting countless items in story mode, you’ll have all sorts of creations to give your custom levels depth and character. Creating a custom level can be daunting at first, but the tutorials easily help you find all of which you were looking for. (And in a nice manner to boot, with Stephen Fry doing the narration)

While I say that the real depth of this game is with its custom levels, and I seem to praise it; this is also its biggest flaw at this moment. Many of the levels are designed purely to get the user “trophies”. The most common instance is what I’d like to call the “recreated levels”. In the sense that the creator basically took some preexisting idea, and turns it into a level. While some of these levels are very nostalgic, fun to play, and impressive recreations: Please do something new once in a while! It was amusing at first, but now it’s just tiring.

I feel the same thing about the music levels. Most of these levels involve you dragging something across a linear path to recreate a popular video game song, or popular other song. There are quite a few levels with interesting music, but this doesn’t really feel like its using the level creator to its full potential.

These are some issues with the game, but they don’t really detract from the overall experience. I don’t really feel like it has grown out of control yet. There are still plenty of creative levels out there, and plenty of things that impress me. Don’t get me wrong, I like the music and ‘recreated levels’, but when is it too much? That’s not really something I can hold against the game. Can’t really hold it against the community, either. The game is only a few weeks old. It’s situations like these is what took me so long to put out an article on LittleBigPlanet. The game is always changing, and the perspective from which I see it changes as well.

At its core, LittleBigPlanet is a very solid product. No, it’s not a gift from the Gods to quench the fanboy’s thirst. The game has its fair share of issues. I’m willing to overlook most of them because I’m so damn addicted to the game, but I guess that’s just personal bias! The regular game offline is little. What you do afterwards is another matter entirely. It’s always changing and getting bigger.

I’ve made some levels, too. If you’d like to play them my psn ID is tearsofash. My better levels are: Land of the Blind, and dada. Search for them, and I’m sure you’ll find them. Land of the Blind is my experiment with a platforming level in which you have to rely more on sound and less on sight. The level “dada” is sort of an homage to the dada movement in the early 1900s. It’s one of those weird anti-art “levels”.

Popular Jpop solo artist Gackt is releasing his first single in about a year.

Why is this worth blogging about? Well, I was perusing through an article at Tokyo-Nights in search of cool news about Japanese music. I was in the music news section when I found the horrible truth.

Jesus.

His new single is called Jesus. Now, we who know about Gackt already shouldn’t find this surprising. We’ve all picked on Gackt for being a pompous egofreak and all that. While his new single may not be referring himself as to Jesus, this leaves him wide open for more snide remarks from the (anti)fanbase.

Sometimes I have to wonder if Gackt is even a real person.

Gackt usually has an appealing aesthetic about his work, but this just makes me want to bury my head in my hands and cry.

Interactive art title Linger in the Shadows hits the PSN; we sit down to discuss Plastic’s recent work with lead designer Michal Staniszewski.

When can we expect to see Linger in the Shadows available?

It’s already available. It was released on 9th of October both in Europe,
US and Australia. Currently we are finishing Japanese version.

What exactly is a demoscene?

That’s a good question. Normally I was always redirecting to the web based
knowledge bases like wikipedia or pasting my friend’s explanation to demoscene.
This time I’ll make an exception and will describe it in my own words.
Demoscene is an art community that creates real time production known as
demos or intros. Demoscene consists of groups. Plastic is one of them.
The history of the Demoscene is as long as the history of home computers is.
In the beginning it was mostly a sort of rivalry between groups to show
which one was better in exploiting the limits of specific hardware (Amiga C64, Amstrad,
Spectrum etc.). Currently the the digital art aspect is more important.

What was your inspiration? Games or otherwise.

I’ve got lot of inspirations which in this case are not games. I’m glad that
a lot of people compare “LiS” to “Shadow Of Colossus” which obviously was
something special. I’ve seen couple of screens from it, and I’ll have to
get my hands on it someday. My main inspirations are some books
and movies are other demoscene productions. I think that’s fair enough :).

Your upcoming title “Linger in Shadows” is going to use the PS3. How will this work? Do you watch it, or can you interact with it?

You can watch it and you can also interact with it.
We call the interactivity mode “Linger” instead of “Watch”.
In this mode you have to use your controller to progress from
one part of our demo to another. The other interaction involves
finding hidden greetings to other Demoscene groups. For each
greeting you can earn a Trophy.

Do you ever see yourself working on something outside of the demoscene? What would it be like?

I was thinking about couple of different jobs. One of them was writting benchmarks for
GPUs. The other was writing tools for realtime graphics editing. But I must say
that I like to bring my ideas to life. In my future work I would like to continue
my experiments based on mixing animation with interactivity or generative
content. I would like to find a new form which something between a movie and a game.

Do you feel that games these days don’t have enough expression?

They have! But let’s say the whole industry is getting completely repetitive
and no one except couple of developers is trying to invest into the new
which is not tested and safe. So we basically have bunch of new fps games
which are going to nowhere. I believe that this year has brought us 3 good games
which are somehow very expressive. I’m talking about GTA4, MGS4 and LBP.
Except those, there are mostly soulless clones!

What kind of things do you expect to accomplish with your demos?

Like I said before, I’m still looking for a new form. A form that you could experience
each time you run it. I know that there’s still a lot to be done in this direction
and it will be extremely hard to find someone willing to release it. But we will
try to do it. Except the form I like to show open ended stories where
time and place does not matter too much. Maybe that’s too much
influence from David Lynch movies.

How responsive is the rest of the demoscene towards your work with high-end technology?

I must admit that I’m very suprised how well demoscene has reacted
when we had shown “LiS” for the first time. I’m also really happy that
lot of demosceners has helped me with this long journey. It only means
that this community is more that competition. It’s a big family that
wants to be on top of digital culture again.

After Linger in the Shadows, do you have any plans for future endeavors?

Well there are a lot of plans in my head. I don’t know thou which road I’ll take
this time. I’m glad that when I was near the same crossroad two years ago I’ve
chosen the right path.

You can currently download Plastic’s “Linger in the Shadows” from the Playstation Store on your Playstation 3 for $2.99. If you’d like to read further about Plastic, Linger in the Shadows, or their other work we encourage you to visit: http://www.plastic-demo.org

I’m sure most of you have seen Microsoft’s new ads featuring the clever average joe anthem “I’m a PC” all over your television set.

The ad campaign is geared towards the average working man that has a PC, and shouldn’t be afraid of Windows Vista. Yeah, it’s an ad campaign, and it’s just as glittered up as Apple’s commercials. However, Windows commercials almost seem like a direct response to the Mac commercials.

At least they know now that this isn’t about originality, it’s more about reaching people. Windows is doing what mac isn’t, and that’s letting everyone know that it’s OK. I think it’s a good message to send, although I am wary of its truthfulness.

Macs are just as much for the average joe as the Windows PC is. It’s just that the Windows operating system needs a little bit of attention at night before going to bed.

I think the point that people are missing is that both are actually pretty decent operating systems (for the most part). They give each user a different experience, and they must both be pampered in they’re own unique ways. Yeah, Windows is a haven for viruses, but that’s because it’s a primary target. I’m sure if the roles were reversed, and the products were the same, Mac would have plenty of viruses as well. Then again, viruses are another subject altogether where we’d discuss the general computer ignorance of the “average joe” that Microsoft is marketing towards.

A PC is not a stereotype? There’s stereotypes about everything. They are usually there for a good reason. You can try to curb the stereotypes with your marketing campaign, but they won’t go away. Or you can be like Apple and just embrace the stereotype. That seems to work.

If you have a “Life without Walls” then where will you have your windows?