Subatomic Brainfreezetag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-5480422013-03-29T13:39:01-04:00david cabrera's exciting and terrifying adventures in the hugpillow wilderness of otaku cultureTypePadWhat's Goin' On With Me: THE KAWAIIKOCHANS ARE GOING TO BE IN SKULLGIRLStag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345233f369e2017c38320d96970b2013-03-29T13:39:01-04:002013-03-29T13:41:13-04:00Hey, guys, it's a good thing I got that post about the Skullgirls fundraiser out before this happened, because there's no longer any way I can be objective about the game anymore. It started with someone asking who the kawaiis...David Cabrera
Hey, guys, it's a good thing I got that post about the Skullgirls fundraiser out before this happened, because there's no longer any way I can be objective about the game anymore.
It started with someone asking who the kawaiis were voting for in the DLC character poll. As a result of that comic, the Skullgirls staff found the comic, and boy, they sure seem to like it.
@kawaiikochans ARIGATOU FOR ANSWER COMICS! IM BIKKURI THAT YOU NO WANT RIRISHII CHARA! DEMO DO YOU SUKI CLOCKWORK NEKO? 75000 YENCOINS LEFT!
So, as they say, "it's become like this." Not long after that SG went and offered us a background spot. They had sold this as an Indiegogo reward already, and everybody bought the spots instantly. I am as broke now as ever, so I definitely couldn't buy one. Still, I had been personally asked and had a spot created for me and everything. I had to try. So I put out the call for a no-notice mini-crowdfund of my own, feeling sort of embarrassed to be asking my fans for money and not really expecting enough money to possibly turn up. Also, it was the final day of the Skullgirls drive, with only about ten hours left to donate at all.
@kawaiikochans CONGRATULATIONS GOZAIMASU! WELCOME TO THE BG CHARA NO SEKAI! FAN-TACHI TOTALLY DEKIMASHITA!
We got it done in four hours. Thank you all so much: the gang at Lab Zero, the friends who helped (I owe Jeff from Colony Drop a couple drinks), and especially the total strangers who pitched in big with no notice. I'm honestly shocked and overcome by people's generosity for a silly little thing like this. Also, the whole spectacle's been the biggest bump I ever had, even if we hadn't made it into the game: readership has skyrocketed, Tumblr followers have doubled, it's lit a fire under my ass and boy am I happy about that.
I said before that having a fanbase has ensured that I can never get bored of doing this and forget about it. Well, that goes double now, or maybe quadruple. I was watching the Salty Cupcakes stream last night and when Cristina Vee came in saying "SUCH A THING, SUCH A THING", I knew that things were gonna be alright. May the comic become even more of such a thing. I'll be working at it.
TENTATIVELY: My personal goal is to at least have a self-published book ready by Otakon. Something small. Probably not a collection, because the first year would be 200 pages, Kawaiikochan obviously has to be in color, and the cost to print that is steep. Right now the thing in my head is a somewhat expanded version of the game magazine gag I submitted for that Crunchyroll contest. Don't hold me to any of this!!
http://subatomicbrainfreeze.typepad.com/subatomic_brainfreeze/2013/03/whats-goin-on-with-me-the-kawaiikochans-are-going-to-be-in-skullgirls.htmlThoughts on the Skullgirls Squiggly Drivetag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345233f369e2017d41654758970c2013-03-12T14:04:46-04:002013-03-12T15:28:40-04:00It's been on my mind. Of course, I have to lay a few things out: I have a couple of personal friends who've done/are doing freelance animation work on Skullgirls. The Kawaiikochans are fans, and they have fans on staff....David Cabrera
It's been on my mind. Of course, I have to lay a few things out: I have a couple of personal friends who've done/are doing freelance animation work on Skullgirls. The Kawaiikochans are fans, and they have fans on staff. So I have a lot of reasons to love this game. I personally like the game a lot (though the only version I can play, 360, is presently out of date)... but not as much as I like VF5 Final.
Anyway, if you haven't heard, Skullgirls was planned to expand long after the original release, but that didn't really go down. Everybody was laid off immediately after release, programmer Mike Z threw out a quick balance patch for the PS3 version even though he wasn't getting paid for it (360 patches cost money, for no good reason)... and that might have been the end for Skullgirls. However, the team did something last-ditch and drastic to save the game, and it worked.
They're crowdfunding the game's continued development. $150K pays for the first new character, Squigly. The prizes are very personalized (voice actresses leaving you voice mail, your character being drawn into the game, that kind of thing!) Squiggly was paid for within the first day, if I recall. They'll almost certainly make it to $375K for the next character, Big Band, and at $600K they'd be putting a new character to a vote.
I don't think anybody expected this level of support this fast. There had been advance buzz about this campaign, and a lot of people were questioning that $150,000 was an acceptable figure to put one character in a fighting game. These people miss the difference between simply buying DLC for some game (DLC with its own budget, backed by some publisher, which may or may not make money) and actually paying to produce the content. The budget is broken down in a rare, candid way on the Indiegogo page, and I recommend you have a look even if you don't care about this sort of thing. It's interesting on its own to see the details of a budget that still qualifies as very low by game dev standards!
A lot of the objections on Neogaf etc were ignorant, sometimes willfully so, but they revealed an attitude which still persists. I specifically thought it was interesting that this title was considered inherently less deserving for being 2D and independent. Ask anybody doing a 2D, traditionally animated game and they'll tell you it's a hell of a chore, extremely expensive, extremely difficult. A 2D fighting game is even harder, because the animation-- the amount of frames, the hitboxes-- is the lifeblood of the game. And most observers, as evidenced by a lot of the internet response to this, can't really tell anyway and probably don't care. There's a reason high-end 2D went away, and there's a reason everybody doing their game that way these days does so only because they are that passionate about it. I'm not saying 3D is somehow easy, mind...
(I'm sure that if so inclined, Capcom would have been able to make a beautiful hand-drawn Street Fighter IV, something that surpassed Third Strike by a mile. But the people who buy videogames wouldn't have given a damn, and it wouldn't have sold anywhere near the millions of copies the 3D game did. I'm sure the horrendous-looking Tokitowa also cost a lot to animate.)
Anyway, the attitude is that 2D is worse, that creatives should be happy to work for scraps or free, and that professionals aren't worth what they charge. As a freelance creative, I assure you that all of these attitudes are shit. It's depressing to see that the majority opinion of consumers is that it's perfectly okay for the folks who make the product they love to live off peanuts. (See also anime fans.) That's probably not going to change any time soon.
The other interesting backlash was actually from some corners of the fighting game community, which I find even more fascinating. In the competition scene Skullgirls is a very minor game. It's a hell of a game, but sheer craftsmanship by itself doesn't guarantee any kind of tournament turn-out (see also Virtua Fighter, a game as unpopular as it is well-made). Marvel 3-- the ultimate spectator fighting game, with extreme speed, a gigantic meta-game, and the possibility for a full turnaround at any moment-- is absolutely the most popular game in SG's corner of the genre.
So some people are kind of mad that a "dead" game is getting all this money, because it's a waste, right? Don't these guys know they could be putting that money into a game people play in tournaments?
And of course this is myopic. Fighting games have always had these two really disparate fan groups, even deep at the core. There are the tourney people who care first and foremost about the competition, the tournaments, the big name players, and of course how fine-tuned the game is for these environments. Then there are the other fans, who follow just about everything else: the increasingly convoluted mythology, the stories of their favorite characters, and so on. There are people who seriously care about the story in Tekken! Smart developers lavish care on both the "story" and "versus" modes for this reason.
There is, of course, overlap-- I care more about the competitive aspects, but I have a great affection for the characters and the genre in general as well-- but these groups are often at odds.
My case in point here is Guilty Gear XX, where the chaotic, sprawling plot has moved once in ten years because GGXX is such a popular competiton game. People die in the GGXX story, and if they're dead they aren't playable anymore, right? Same thing happens in King of Fighters, where characters have had to be brought back from the dead in a story that went completely incoherent about a decade ago.
Some fans want a game to have more characters than any other: competitive players want the characters to be tightly balanced and value that balance over the number. See Marvel 2, which has a gigantic cast that is mostly useless for competition play. Opinions vary very widely on that game, perhaps more widely than any other, depending on what one values in a fighting game.
And a lot of the time competitive players will call a game dead, like Skullgirls or Blazblue, because it's no longer interesting as a competitive game (looking mostly at BB here, whose design and balance come off pretty confused), or it hasn't picked up in their scene.
The thing is... fans don't just disappear because there aren't people playing a game in a tournament. Skullgirls wasn't just liked by people who play fighting games in tournaments. It has a wider appeal than that. The people who couldn't buy $1000 "draw me into the game!" (sadly I could not put Masaka and Majide in) spots fast enough were probably not a pack of tournament fighting game players. It's not just them out there, and I think the scene often doesn't realize this. It's a much wider world out there. I'm glad the Skullgirls team were able to find the people they needed.
http://subatomicbrainfreeze.typepad.com/subatomic_brainfreeze/2013/03/thoughts-on-the-skullgirls-squiggly-drive.htmlMahjong Fight Scrub - LAYING LOW, AND, WAIT, MAYBE NOTtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345233f369e2017d4197440f970c2013-03-07T23:35:17-05:002013-03-10T15:41:00-04:00Well, shit. What do you imagine the guy to my left has? I'll make it easy for you. He's going for a flush in the sou suit, or perhaps a chanta (all outside tiles [123, 789] and honors). His discards...David Cabrera
Well, shit. What do you imagine the guy to my left has? I'll make it easy for you. He's going for a flush in the sou suit, or perhaps a chanta (all outside tiles [123, 789] and honors). His discards make chanta unlikely. Meanwhile I have four pairs in the hand, and I've been thinking about seven pairs. Right now I'm thinking "but how am I going to assemble that without letting go of these sou tiles?"
Well, then. The answer is going to be that I don't go for seven pairs at all, and instead attempt a normal shape. Discarding South I can pon 4m, 8p, or 8s and be in tenpai. If the player to my left lets go of 6p or 9p, which is likely, I can call chi and be tenpai that way. These are cheap options, but it'll stop this guy and that's what I'm going for. There is the chance that he's waiting on South as part of his flush, but I go on ahead.
Tenpai. I can discard 7p (the dora) for a double pon wait on 4m/8p or I can discard 8p for a double-sided 6p/9p wait. Generally, when you're presented with this choice you go with the double-ended wait: you're waiting on more tiles that way. And in this case the double pon wait involves throwing out the dora, so screw that. I go with the latter. Hatsu, dora 2 is a pretty solid hand: mangan if I draw it, 6400 if I don't.
I do not reach. I am leading by a small margin, just 2700 points, and the other players are probably more worried about holding on to sou tiles. This is the perfect time to sit back and let them deal into me. If the player to my right deals in, he's busted and it's over. Worse comes to worse, I can still fold.
Oh ho ho, what's this? The player to my right is in dire straits. At 1500 points, he needs a huge direct hit to make it out of last place... and he's let go of a dora. His hand is at least close to complete if he's willing to let go of that in his desperate situation. So I change my mind and reach on the next discard. I think all three of them are liable to deal into me now.
Though he isn't close to tenpai after all, he is desperate, and, yes, holding on to those sou tiles. I get my tile on on the very next discard. With reach, ippatsu (one-shot) and an ura dora my hand goes to haneman, 12,000 points. Player to the right is very busted, and this game is over.
(A little hindsight from the replay: the player to my left actually wasn't tenpai until long after I was. The calls had been a little hasty.)
http://subatomicbrainfreeze.typepad.com/subatomic_brainfreeze/2013/03/mahjong-fight-scrub-laying-low-and-wait-maybe-not.htmlMahjong Fight Scrub - FROM THE PAGES OF KINDAI MAHJONG (ANSWER)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345233f369e2017d414cc493970c2013-03-01T13:11:01-05:002013-03-01T13:11:01-05:00Hidden tiles are 8899s. So the hand is 11m123p77788899s. Waits are 1m, 6s, 9s. Ron on 1m is a reach-only hand. 50 fu 1 han, 1600 points. Ron on 6s is reach, pinfu, iipeikou. Let's break it apart. 11m (pair)...David Cabrera
Hidden tiles are 8899s.
So the hand is 11m123p77788899s. Waits are 1m, 6s, 9s.
Ron on 1m is a reach-only hand. 50 fu 1 han, 1600 points.
Ron on 6s is reach, pinfu, iipeikou. Let's break it apart.
11m (pair) 123p 789s 789s 78s 6s (the winning tile).
Iipeikou because of the double sequence, 778899s. Pinfu because it's all sequences, non-value pair, double-sided wait. 30 fu 3 han, 3900 points.
Ron on 9s is the highest-scoring possibility.
11m (pair) 123p 789s 789s 78s 9s (the winning tile).
It's the same idea, but winning off 9s makes this junchan, chanta's big brother. All tiles are sets including a terminal, no inside tiles or honors. Reach, pinfu, iipeiko, junchan make six han, which is 12,000 points. Haneman.
If you drew this you could call it san ankou (three concealed triples), but that would be a lower-scoring hand and we only count the highest-scoring possbility. If you drew 1m, then yes, reach, tsumo, san ankou. Mangan (8000).
The tiles can take all kinds of interesting shapes.
http://subatomicbrainfreeze.typepad.com/subatomic_brainfreeze/2013/03/mahjong-fight-scrub-from-the-pages-of-kindai-mahjong-answer.htmlMahjong Fight Scrub - FROM THE PAGES OF KINDAI MAHJONGtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345233f369e2017c3704fba1970b2013-02-26T19:20:02-05:002013-02-26T19:20:03-05:00Okay, here's something else I bought while on vacation in Tokyo for the New Year: I left this issue of Kindai (Modern) Mahjong magazine with a friend and though we live maybe 45 minutes apart, I only very recently picked...David Cabrera
Okay, here's something else I bought while on vacation in Tokyo for the New Year: I left this issue of Kindai (Modern) Mahjong magazine with a friend and though we live maybe 45 minutes apart, I only very recently picked it up from him. Kinma is a mahjong magazine, yes, but most of its pages are actually taken up by manga about mahjong.
Yeah, that's Fukumoto's Akagi on the cover, yeah that Washizu looks like he's in trouble this time. I won't spoil but I think Fukumoto's finally trying to wrap up his Planet Namek situation.... at chapter 245. Will the magazine really survive Akagi finally ending?
Mudazumo also runs in this magazine, along with whatever ol' Katayama (Super Zugan) is up to and a host of other series. Someone should translate this stuff. Dammit all!
Anyway, we're not actually here to talk about that, maybe next post. I want to show you a little supplement that came with this particular week's issue, and share a tiny morsel of what's inside.
This is a quiz book by our pal Takunori Kajimoto, who does a lot of this kind of writing. It isn't limited only to "what would you discard" questions like Kajimoto's manuals(recommended, though their English translation is VERY questionable and more than a few of the questions/answers are totally incomprehensible). In addition to more typical questions, there are also questions about table manners, questions that take the whole table situation into account, and even questions where you have to figure out what could be in a hand. (If Mr. Kajimoto sees this and wants me to take it down, by the way, then down it goes.) Here is one of those.
The four tiles at the end are hidden from view.
11m123p7778s????.
The question goes like this. Player is non-dealer, and is in Reach with a three-sided wait. This hand could be 1600 points, 3900 points, or 12000 points. What are the four hidden tiles?
The answer is in the next post, which I will wait a bit before putting up. This is a one-shot; I just wanted to give an idea of what the quiz book is like, not actually post the thing.
http://subatomicbrainfreeze.typepad.com/subatomic_brainfreeze/2013/02/mahjong-fight-scrub-from-the-pages-of-kindai-mahjong.htmlShin Janryumon - ARE YOU SERIOUS, I'M NEVER GOING TO GET SANSHOKU DOUKOU, GO TO HELLtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345233f369e2017c364f8387970b2013-01-27T13:38:23-05:002013-01-27T13:39:45-05:00Online mahjong client Janryumon has updated to a new version as of the 15th called Shin (True) Janryumon. As always, its aim is to deliver a fancy, flashy experience compared to more austere clients like Tenhou. Free-to-play MJ with bells,...David Cabrera
Online mahjong client Janryumon has
updated to a new version as of the 15th called Shin (True)
Janryumon. As always, its aim is to deliver a fancy, flashy
experience compared to more austere clients like Tenhou. Free-to-play
MJ with bells, whistles, and experience grind.
JRM 3, the previous version, was a
rough transition period. Selling costume jewelry and so on for the
players' hands wasn't popular, so the developers tried hard to
monetize their free-to-play game with various schemes that never
quite worked out.
First they introduced the league, which
used special rules and required entry tickets which eventually had to
be paid for. Not that many were actually interested in paying to
participate in the weekly sessions, however; especially when the
higher levels introduced increasingly strict and uncommon rule sets.
League was removed for the new version.
After that, the clock for players to
make a move was set to an absurdly low three seconds, and players
were expected to pay up for every single discard where they wanted to
take a moment and think. Though I've always been much more of a
Tenhou player (in fact, I gladly pay a monthly fee there), I actually
quit JRM entirely after this one. It was just too desperate. Again,
this idea was dropped in the current version.
As a player and occassional payer of
free-to-play games, I believe there's a very thin line between fair
deal and ripoff. Players will absolutely buy into the F2P model, but
there's nothing that turns them away faster than the feeling they're
being taken advantage of. Once you get there-- like with the clock
thing-- people just turn around and walk away.
I don't pay for Tenhou because I'm
obligated: until you get to the very highest levels of play, you can
use the browser client for free as much as you like. Rather, I want
to reward this one-man operation for doing a great job delivering
what is bar none the best online MJ client in the world. You do get a
much better client for paying, of course, and I believe I get a good
deal.
(I mean, if you really want to rip off
a one-man operation like Tenhou, maybe you're just a terrible
person?)
So the new JRM has leveled with the
players. It needs to make money like any other game does.
Free-to-play wasn't really working out. So now Shin JRM is a
pay-to-play service with a scheme comparable to the arcade mahjong
games I played in Japan.
The pay currency translates straight
across to yen, so it's 80y to play an East-only round, 150y to play
East-South, and 100y to play a three-player East-South round. I
assume that new signups are given an amount of pay currency to get
themselves started. Items can no longer be bought with cash, but with
a separate game currency that's rewarded in tiny volumes after a
match. So we have:
-PlayNC money, kaimo (buys game points)
-Game points, used to actually start a
game
-Shop money, used to buy everything
else.
As a previous player of Janryumon (and
with a lot of unused tickets for the league, which were transferred
into money), I was given about 15,000y worth of game points. I can
play a hundred matches without worrying about it.
The only way to get more game points is
to participate in JRM's events, which are very grindy and don't offer
enough of a reward to keep a player going.
For example, every week you're given a
bingo card to fill out-- with the boxes being types of hands and point values you have to try and get-- and every line you fill gives a certain
amount of game money. The problem is that while many spots on the
card are common, every line has at least one box that is ridiculously
difficult or merely statistically improbable.
The middle box on this card is “get a
yakuman”, one of the big-deal hands I've drawn maybe ten or twenty
times out of tens of thousands of hands in my entire MJ career.
Another box is shou sangen, which is one step down from a yakuman.
I've gotten this hand five or six times. Another time I was asked to
get sanshoku doukou, three triples of the same number. I have gotten
this hand once in my entire time playing mahjong, and it was
yesterday. And no, it was too late to count it towards my bingo card.
Sit down and play all day and all night, you're still extremely
unlikely to fill even one line of the bingo card.
The game is riddled with this stuff; it
absolutely loves to send the player on quests, and better still if
they're nearly impossible. With goals like these, it doesn't even
feel like grinding towards earning a goal anymore: it's just going on
JRM and hoping you hit their lottery... and the lottery prize is 100
yen. And of course, you can tell when there is someone deliberately playing to fulfill an achievement. There's also a lot of addiction design, like a bonus for logging
in daily and another bonus for continually playing matches.
The poor ranking system of previous
JRM titles is gone in favor of a more traditional level-up system.
Like with the pay-to-play thing, I consider this re-branding with
honesty. The kyu and dan rankings JRM had before implied skill, when
in fact anybody could achieve 9th dan by just playing a
ton of games. The game would forgive your losses frequently, so you weren't really going any place but up. You would see total beginners at high ranks
because they'd just spent a huge amount of time playing the game.
(kind of like the league, I MEAN NOTHING)
Now, in the place of that, there's a
numbered level (like I'm JRM Level 12 right now) and a ranked level.
It takes 30 games of normal play to actually be ranked, and I'm still a ways off from that, but it's a rate number like on Tenhou. Players at
certain rate levels are given rankings, like the top division for
2000R+ players is A1. I imagine that being a 1600-1700R Tenhou player
I'll be in the B division.
The cost of a
better system is that PlayNC actually wiped everybody's rankings
under the old system. You can't have a guy who's simultaneously 9-dan
and D-rank, after all, and there had been plenty of players who would
have looked like that. Anyway, wiping thousands of hours of play from
the slate is a great way to lose a lot of long-time players forever,
I imagine.
Having a good ranking and matching
system is really important because it directly affects your quality
of play, especially in mahjong. In the same sense that going to the
newbie-packed 7447 is a slaughter for a seasoned player (records in
the
league are either abnormally good or abnormally
bad; try sorting by average placement), JRM is loaded with super-casual players who only barely know
what they're doing. Screenshot related.
In mahjong, if one person makes clear that they don't know what
they're doing, the game becomes a mess as the competent prey on that
player. If there's two or more of them, the whole game just becomes a coin toss. In fact-- I'm gonna say this-- the players on 7447 are
actually stronger, on average, than the people I played against
starting from the bottom of Shin JRM. That's how bad the play I saw
was.
Which is fine, because as I move up
(I'm at like 50% 1st place right now, speaking of abnormal
records) I'm getting matched with players who are actually in my
range (1700-1800R).
Things I like about JRM:
-Use of events: this is in theory a
great motivator. I'd like to be able to participate in the events and
tournaments on Tenhou, but the time difference makes this
prohibitively difficult.
-Audiovisual flash: Obviously this is the game's main attraction and the big reason people like it. The game looks
pretty good, and the new version has noticeable improvements. The
whole table is modeled in 3D, even the comfy-looking leather chairs.
The in-character voice work is a nice touch: right now my character
is voiced by Nobuyuki Hiyama (playing “Akiba-type”) and when I
grind up enough money I want to buy the Shigeru Chiba voice really
badly.
Things I don't:
-Actual implementation of events: I
understand that this is just part of the free-to-play design, but
sanshoku doukou? Come the fuck on. There is also the tile-collecting
system, left over from JRM3, in which I haven't earned a single one
of the unlockable items. It's been a year. Endless empty treasure boxes. Terrible. This
is Asian MMORPG-style grind and it is not remotely fun.
Would I stick around for this when I
got to the point where I had to pay? In other words, would I cancel
my Tenhou premium subscription in its favor? Nope. They'd have to
have exclusive tournaments or something on that level, and even then
I'd just never cancel Tenhou premium!
http://subatomicbrainfreeze.typepad.com/subatomic_brainfreeze/2013/01/online-mahjong-client-janryumon-has-updated-to-a-new-version-as-of-the-15th-called-shin-true-janryumon-as-always-it.htmlI Went, I Went To Japan - I'M ALRIGHT, I'M ALRIGHT - Part Mahjongtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345233f369e2017c358bb7d8970b2013-01-10T11:15:01-05:002013-01-10T11:15:01-05:00I didn't get to play at a parlor (jansou) because we just didn't have four game-ready people at any one time. We had three most of the time, but three-player isn't the same. There are lots of parlors around, and...David Cabrera
I didn't get to
play at a parlor (jansou) because we just didn't have four game-ready people at any one time. We had three most of the time, but three-player isn't the same. There are lots of parlors around, and given the fact that gambling is (TOTALLY NOT) going down, they're all hole-in-the-wall kind of places. Never the main floor of a building, from what I saw.
The true sanctioned gambling over there is in the form of pachinko and slots. The halls are way larger than the arcades, packed row-to-row, screaming loud. Because I wanted to play pachinko at least one time in Japan, I played a non-gambling Fist of the North Star machine at Don Quixote. 100y was 100 balls. Real pachinko joints usually have higher rates than this. (And there's one right under Donki if you want to find out.)
The scene where Ken hits Souther, and Souther asks him "How many more seconds do I have to live?" and then counts them off played. Naturally Souther did not die, just like in the comics, and I lost.
Though I didn't get to hit a jansou, I took the opportunity to buy a beautiful new set. It's known as the “Tenhou” and
is prohibitively expensive to actually ship to the States (an
English-language store sells it for $500 shipped!!) so I sent it to a
friend's house via Amazon JP and picked it up once I was in the country. 15000y. I came to this set via the mjpai wiki and its original 2ch thread, which basically just says "BUY THE TENHOU." Some auto tables use these very tiles!
I
thought a few people might be curious as to how the Japanese mahjong
arcade games work: certainly I was. They're always out of the way,
for a pretty simple reason: people smoke like chimneys at these
things. A lot of regular arcade cabs have ashtrays on them too, but
the MJ ones all do.
(At TRY the machines are “self-service”, meaning “bring your
own damn ashtray”.) A guy next to me at MJ5 Evo was puffing so hard
that I was coughing until the next day! There are plastic shields
between monitors but this is more for screen privacy's sake than to
block the smoke. So you might want to do a “when in Rome” and
wear a surgical mask like so many people all over Tokyo did.
(At HEY the mahjong
section actually played old-man idol pop and everything: I heard Fly
High from Gunbuster during one hand.)
I mostly played
Sega's MJ5 and MJ5 Evo (the new version was location testing), but I gave Fight
Club a try as well. Obviously I was drawn to MJ5 because it has the
look, sound and feel of an AM2 game. The table is 3D, there are a lot
of flashy effects like missile lock-ons to your tiles, lights from
the skies, running TV-style commentary, and full video cutscenes for
yakuman hands. It's two of my favorite tastes together.
(I had this hand
where, during reach on a good hand, I dealt the very last tile--
West!!-- into someone's kokushi musou. Imagine my sadness.)
After that hand I was blown up by lasers.
AM2's name isn't on it but it's on
previous versions and I'd be
shocked if they didn't have guys involved in it. You know that
American 80s-movie aesthetic of so many of their games? It's got that
vibe. It's also got buttons even though the game has a touchscreen
that can do all of these things, because these guys know that it
feels good to press buttons. Especially the huge red one that says
WIN. Also c'mon this
music.
Obviously the match is taking place on a fighter jet.
MJ5 also has the
Saki license, so if you're feeling lonely, right now the game
supplies a single-player mode where you play against the Achiga
girls. Wasn't lonely enough to find out what this mode was like,
sorry. The Saki Cup is also ongoing as I write this: sadly, I didn't
play enough games to rank. This structure was the same as Tenhou's
championship: you played an amount of games and the game would take
your highest total score. Rather than an actual tournament or league
structure it's sort of just “grind until you're extremely lucky”.
Fight
Club is a little simpler with fast, crisp 2D rather than 3D, but it's
an arcade game and it still has a certain level of flash. Explosions
and dragons and stuff like that. Music is probably by some of the
Bemani guys; it pounds. Does wonders for the tension. It's backed by
the bigger pro league, so maybe you'll run into Jenn
and Garthe.
(Jenn had a pretty good spot on the poster, but poor Garthe was all
the way in the back!)
These games all
have their ways of pulling you in, it's part of the trade. If you
play either game on 100y, it'll LET you play, but circumstances will
kind of suck. On Sega MJ, you have a bank of time you use to make
your discard, and if you run out of time you can't continue playing
unless you put in another 100y. You can bypass this by just putting
in 200y at the start. (Most machines will give you 3 credits for
200y: when you've leveled up enough and are allowed to play full east/south games, they will cost 3 credits.)
Fight
Club has a meaner version of this: for 100y you start with a “life
bar” of 5000 points, and if you lose more than that you've got to
pay up to continue. 5000 points is very little
to lose. I'm not sure if you then continue with another
life bar or what. If you don't pay up you lose instantly, and the
other players have to deal with your replacement by a CPU drone.
Obviously you can bypass this crap with 200y. It's completely
possible to start MFC with 100y, have another guy pull a really good
hand immediately, and just lose the money. Both of these games train
you fast to either pay 200y or not play at all. Being as you play for
20-40 minutes in one shot, I can't really blame them.
Winners play again
for free on both games. I was lucky and much more skilled than my
opponents on MFC and was able to play three full matches on 100y.
Obviously you are paying a whole hell of a lot more to play on these
machines than you would on Tenhou, where the least you can pay is
zero and the most you can pay is 525y/month. You'll also need to buy
a card to keep your records: this costs 300y.
Next time I'll let you know how the parlors are. Of course, in the meantime I've been right back to Tenhou. The league's started again, so I should at least grind up to 30 games...
http://subatomicbrainfreeze.typepad.com/subatomic_brainfreeze/2013/01/i-went-i-went-to-japan-im-alright-im-alright-part-mahjong.htmlI Went, I Went To Japan - I'M ALRIGHT, I'M ALRIGHT - Part 2tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345233f369e2017ee727b061970d2013-01-09T20:40:04-05:002013-01-09T20:36:45-05:00NEW YEAR: The New Year is the biggest Japanese holiday. Being in Japan for this would probably suck in most parts of the country, because everything closes... but Akiba doesn't. Nothing is sacred in Akiba. My hatsumode (first shrine visit)...David Cabrera
NEW YEAR:
The New Year is the
biggest Japanese holiday. Being in Japan for this would probably suck
in most parts of the country, because everything closes... but Akiba
doesn't. Nothing is sacred in Akiba.
My
hatsumode (first shrine visit) was perhaps the fondest memory of my
entire visit to Japan. I walked with all my new drinking friends from
our regular bar to the local temple... and I had my mind blown. I
understood that the new year was a big deal in Japan, but here in
this temple at midnight stood thousands
of locals lined up to make their first offering. The place was
enormous and naturally beautiful, which are two things that impress
you even more when you're very drunk.
On account of the
line being so long, we opted to just stand around and enjoy new
year's snacks (Yakitori! Takoyaki! New Year's Sake! Asahi!) as we
hobbled around the shrine. See a shrine. They are beautiful. You will
not regret it. Just don't show up drunk, I figure that's gotta be a cultural faux pas when it's not New Year's Day.
COMIKET:
I actually was only
at Comic Market for maybe an hour and a half. I know, I know, this is
the biggest comics gathering in the world. But I simply didn't have
any plans to buy anything, and I especially didn't want to end up
with something that would give me trouble at the border... and you
don't know what's going to be in those doujinshi unless you check
every page! We saw some friends with books to sell-- including one
person we met at the hotel breakfast!-- checked out the cosplay and
got going to the life-size Odaiba Gundam.
You
still have to see Comiket, if you're in the area at the time. It is
an overwhelming spectacle of otaku crowding. The pictures you've seen
cannot prepare you for the actual scale of the thing. It is bigger
than the anime convention you are thinking about: lines for a
single circle will exceed the
lines at a big US convention, with the poor schlub at the back of the
line forced to hold a big cardboard sign featuring terrible things
being done to Nanoha.
That
said, you can just walk on in pretty easily if you don't have
to be there as Comiket opens on account of some book that's in short
supply. (I heard of a Sword Art Online book that went to 30,000y the
day after it was on sale!) We showed up around 2: the crowds were
still insane, but it was pretty easy to get around. Again, you should
definitely not miss it, if only to understand the sheer size of the
event. It is the biggest otaku thing you'll ever see in your life,
guaranteed.
OTAKU STORES:
5-foot Great Mazinger outside a figure shop in Akiba.
I actually didn't
do a ton of otaku shopping because I knew my budget would only allow
so much loot straight-up dropped on toys and such. Also, one floor at
Kotobukiya really did me in.
If you're buying anything, go to Nakano Broadway. Damn right I'm taking you out of
Akiba. This is the home base for Mandarake, the biggest otaku goods
chain. Press through what appears to be a normal, bustling shopping
mall for a little while, and you'll start to notice something: there
is no end to this place. To call the complex merely massive is a
criminal understatement. Nakano Broadway is a black hole of commerce.
Get all the way back, and you'll see Mandarake outlets for every
otaku and fujoshi niche that it is possible to sell products to. If
you were blown away by the shops in Akiba, your head is going to come
flying clean off in this place. Everything you were thinking of, from
new to extreme vintage, is here and it is reasonably priced. Make it
to the top and behold the ultimate vintage robot moonbase, complete
with shrine gates, atmospheric noise, and the enbalmed body of an
alien. One of the robots was a million yen! The cashiers I bought
stuff from were dressed like Quattro and Red Buster.
There are
apartments here, people live here. What a life! They don't have to go
far from home unless they get lonely, I presume.
I didn't run
through a lot of the stores but I did check out Kotobukiya's entire
store. This never comes up on Astro Toy, because we don't do PVC, but
I actually really like Koto's stuff: they pride themselves on their
quality and it is indeed consistently high. Their store, like so many
others, is divided by audience. The bottom floor has merchandise from
the major current hits like Eva, Fate/Zero, imas, and others. The
next floor up (don't quote me on exactly what the layout was) was
definitely girl-ota-oriented, with a general mountain of pretty boys,
cute mascots, and JRPGs. The next floor up was the one after my own
heart, with robots and tokusatsu stuff. After that I believe there
was a misc floor, and the top floor was a temporary exhibit on Sword
Art Online.
Yo, guys, little
etiquette. I know SAO sucked-- trustworthy sources told me so
emphatically-- but do not leave asshole messages in English like
“NOVEL WAS WAY BETTER” (but you've left this message in English!)
or “ANIMATE SUCHANDSUCH INSTEAD” on these people's Post-It wall.
This makes you unbearablel. People pretend to listen to you in
conversation, but they only do so out of politeness.
Anyway, I bought:
Akibaranger DX Moe
Moe Z-Cune: this is the gun that the Akibarangers use to transform.
There is also a large-scale PVC figure inside! Surprisingly the gun
was on half-off sale at 6000y (about $80), but I haven't noticed any
serious problems. The insane design of the item demands that you be pretty careful with it, which means don't wave the gun around too much... but what did anybody expect from a toy gun
holding a PVC figure inside of it?
Charge Man Ken mug. There was a whole display case full of Charge Man Ken stuff, including stuff commemmorating great episodes like "Dynamite in the Brain!!" and the special "Charging Go!" PVC.
Generic towel with
Japanese “Dododododo” sound effect printed all over it, hiding in
the Jojo section (fooled me!), Garo bandanna featuring the Horror
inscriptions from the show, Zaruba clear sticker to put on my next
computer/tablet.
I put
away a lot of things
that I wished I could afford. I am still sad over Hot Toys Ryo Saeba
(10,000y on sale!!), Soul of Chogokin Leopardon (Spider-Man's robot),
and a huge, very ugly 600y figure of Guy Shishio from back when
Gaogaigar was on TV. Again: when I come back it will be with twice
the time and three times the money.
THE GUNDAM:
So the Odaiba
Gundam is a mall ornament. This isn't to say it isn't astonishing: it
will pull the breath right out from your lungs. But you need to know
that it is a mall ornament.
Diver City is a
typical and boring mall that would really like you to check it out!
That's why they have this “Gundam” thing in the back. They make
it really hard for you to actually find the Gundam: it's not even on
some of the maps! Facing the main entrance, go left where it looks
like there's nothing around. Just keep going that way. You will
eventually come upon it, even though nothing really indicates that
you will. As a tourist, it's probably a total waste for you to hang
out in Diver City-- see the H&M! The Lacoste!!-- though we did
have food court udon superior to most I've eaten here.
The Gundam is
actual size. Go ahead and gawk, that's what everybody else is here
for. Oh my God, holy shit. Wow.
A family chuckled at us as we made
fools of ourselves in front of it. The dad was complaining that the
Gundam didn't hold a beam saber.
They sell Haro meatbuns and Gundam
taiyaki here, and also at a little stand outside the full-fledged
Gundam Cafe in Akiba. Both were decent. The girl who took my order there was wearing a
Celestial Being uniform. We didn't eat at the actual Gundam Cafe
because I heard from a lot of people that it's actually pretty lame, and I'm willing to believe that.
Don't waste good meals when you're on vacation!
JOYPOLIS:
If you're in the
area of the Gundam you're also right by Tokyo Joypolis, one of Sega's
amusement parks. Again, I wish I'd had a couple hours to spend there. We thought it'd be lame, but it's a full-scale amusement park. There's a high degree of
interactivity, since it's Sega and all, and nearly all the rides are also games to some
degree. We saw a huge amount of “awesome!!-- oh no the line is an
hour” attractions and rode none because we had somewhere to be. For gamers and Sega nerds, there's a version of
Initial D that lets you ride in full-scale models of the cars from
the series, and alternate versions of House of the Dead 4 and Let's
Go Jungle that take place in movie-theater-size chambers. And of
course there's a Sonic Land. It's definitely a place to spend a day:
day passes are 3000y, if I recall.
ARCADES:
This is still a
surviving institution in Japan, unlike most places on the earth! When
the guys and I were not actually seeing people and doing things, we
were probably having fun in the arcades around home base: the three
Club Sega locations, HEY, TRY Tower, and Taito Station.
They're all
basically laid out like this: UFO catchers and kids' arcade games on
the bottom floor, and then progressively more “gamer” things as
you go up. Music games, then shooters, then fighters, and after that
the really hardcore stuff like card games, Derby Owner's Club, and
others of that ilk. Mahjong is usually around there too.
Pretty much any of
the places I hung out in in Akiba-- but especially these places!--
would make an arcade game geek from anywhere else in the world weep.
The difference is that vast. Games that would be impossible treasures
elsewhere in the world (like, say, complete histories of Cave,
including footnotes like Batsugun and DDP2) were just sitting around
in these joints.
If you only go to
one it has to be HEY (Hirose Entertainment Yard). Their centerpiece,
a custom-made Darius II featuring two screens the size of a grown
man, forced me to reconsider art and life themselves. I grinned
really hard when the line “I ALWAYS WANTED A THING CALLED TUNA
SASHIMI” came booming in. Don't take pictures, it's not allowed. Be
nice.
Coming down from
the station, the third Club Sega (presently it has Virtua Fighter and
Border Break signs way up on the building) has a museum floor at the
top where techs in Sega jumpsuits keep watch over a historical
archive of massive deluxe cabinets. Present is the super-rare F-Zero
AX, an Afterburner Climax doubles cab, Ferarri F355, and others,
including the humble Super Hang-On sitdown. No Sega fan should miss
this floor. On F-Zero and Afterburner, make sure you buckle the
seatbelt to activate the machine's motion features. Climax in
particular is an exhilarating ride.
The staff got my
bag when I lost it playing MJ5 and presumed it lost forever. Nice
bunch of guys. I think that by the last day or so they recognized me (you know I couldn't go a day without Afterburner).
Thanks.
The most popular
game overall is easily Gundam Extreme Vs. (FULL BOOST). The game that
started back at Federation Vs. Zeon on the Dreamcast has grown
tremendously over the years and I don't think anyone who watched it
could question it as a solid versus shooter. Every place has an
enbankment of at least eight of these machines, and usually they have
two such units.
However, like any
arcade fighting game, it's really hard to actually learn anything:
multiplayer cabinets will throw you into deathmatches with highly
skilled strangers who will combo you into dust without pity.
No
joke, I was actually Gundam-bullied. Some guy saw me playing, sat
down on the other row, picked Wing Zero, and mercilessly chased me
and only me for as
many games as it took for me to get up and walk away. What a dick!
The only other game
that was really occupied all that much that weekend was the new
Blazblue version, and a little SF4 at HEY. Under-Night was there, for
example, but I didn't see a single person play it but me. These
didn't really seem like fighter hotspots. Plus, in my experience,
people were straight up scared to play with the foreigner. I got
through an entire game of Garou on the only free machine in that
arcade (TRF) and nothing!
Fans
of “poverty” (lesser-loved) fighting games will want to go to TRF
at the top of Nakano Broadway, where guys laugh their way through the
incredibly difficult “basketball
combos”
of Hokuto no Ken and play stuff like Breakers and Chaos Code on the
side. This was the arcade most like the American fighting game scene
with which I'm familiar. TRF used to have a maid.
The coolest game
you'll never play was Gunslinger Stratos, by the Gundam Vs.
developers. It's controlled by a 9mm and Magnum (concept by Gen
Urobuchi, natch) with thumbsticks on them to move the player. Gunkata
motions as seen in Equilibrium are required of the player. Seriously,
the guns are magnetic and you have to pose. It's an insane game and
according to a friend who's quite skilled himself, “I think you
have to be a genius to play it”.
The "variety" order at Baird in Harajuku, which brews its own beer. So does TY Harbor, actually. Don't get the impression that that's common, those are just the kinds of places we drank!
Next post is all mahjong stuff, pictures of the beautiful new set I bought, thoughts on the MJ arcade games. They're pretty sweet!
http://subatomicbrainfreeze.typepad.com/subatomic_brainfreeze/2013/01/i-went-i-went-to-japan-im-alright-im-alright-part-2.htmlI Went, I Went To Japan - I'M ALRIGHT, I'M ALRIGHT - Part 1tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345233f369e2017d3fa6cc26970c2013-01-09T19:38:20-05:002013-02-27T23:25:14-05:00(This will be a multi-part post on my vacation in Tokyo. It got very long very fast and for everybody's benefit I've split it up.) Part 2 Mahjong Part Okay, so I'm starting to recover from the jetlag, and even...David Cabrera
(This will be a multi-part post on my vacation in Tokyo. It got very long very fast and for everybody's benefit I've split it up.)
Okay, so I'm starting to recover from
the jetlag, and even though I've gotten a little sick I have to start
talking about my Japan vacation. Most of the vacation was spent
meeting people, eating and drinking, but all the time in between was
obviously otaku-out time.
I stayed in Akihabara. Pain is power,
no shame in my game. A week was not enough time, because it was
really more like five and a half days. The thing I thought the most
was “I can't wait to come back here with more time!”. I got a lot
done, in any case. Next time I go, I'll do so with twice the time and
three times the money. If you're thinking about Japan, plan well and
save up as much as you reasonably can.
TRAVEL:
This is the first international trip
I've ever gone on. I've barely even been around the US. It was that
much more exciting for being such!
When you do your scheduling, don't
forget how much time you will lose to the flight. We left Wednesday
evening and, delayed a bit by the bad weather on the East Coast after
Christmas, got into town around 11 PM Thursday night Japan time. All
that was possible that late was a little walking about town and an
early bedtime.
My ANA flight was relatively comfy, the
food was decent (huh?!), and there was a self-contained entertainment
unit in there that gave me such delights as Wolf Children, weird
variety TV, and even the same in-flight MJ that Carl
played. A 14-hour flight is terrible no matter what you do-- it will
wear on you-- and ANA alleviated that pain in any way they
could. Even in Economy class.
I'm not gonna exactly review Wolf
Children here, but I know most folks haven't seen it yet and will
want to get an opinion. It's a beautiful film. Don't expect the
spectacle of Summer Wars: it is a very muted and heartfelt family
drama. Some points at the end don't make logical sense, but then it
wouldn't be as beautiful. I'd go so far as to call it real
moe anime.
Going back, on the other hand, was a
miserable 24 solid hours of travel. I will make sure to always get
nonstop flights in the future, lesson definitely learned there. I
flew two United flights on the way back: on the first I was actually
too tall for the badly-shaped seat and couldn't manage to fall asleep
in it despite being desperately tired. I was squirming in pain pretty
much for ten hours straight. Lesson learned: pay for extra leg room
next time because I'm really tall. The second, my flight was cancelled. I was laid over for 4
hours, then I was delayed for three more, then told to turn around and go away over a small issue that was easily resolved. At this point I've been awake for a
day and waiting in a lobby for six hours; I'm practically delirious
and then panicked! The people at O'Hare were
huge dicks to me, is what I'm saying. The folks on the first United
flight were very nice, though. O'Hare is also a terrible place to be
trapped for seven hours. By the time I was home I was a dead man walking.
Narita
airport has an arcade! Guess what kind of games they have? Sega's
airline sim, Taito's airline sim, and the in-house version, which looks significantly more realistic!
ACCOMODATIONS:
My
first hotel was the Via Inn in Akiba. This place is built in kind of
a donut shape: you get out of your room and you're on a circular
balcony, and the wind comes up the middle. I thought this was really
cool, even in the winter, but you may not feel the same. The room was
a nice, typical Japanese hotel room, which is to say our amenities
were extremely densely packed, the bathroom was magical (as I said to
people more than once, the real Cool
Japan that advertisers should go international with is “godlike
hotel bathrooms”), and there was only enough room for our two beds
and our luggage. No complaints with this place.
Second hotel was
R&B in Okachimachi (about 15 minutes walking from the main Akiba
strip), which was a lot like my room at the Via Inn except if
everything was fifteen years older. I would have been able to live
with that, given the low cost, but the major issue was that my
mattress was a god damn rock. I barely slept here, and when I woke up
in the morning I got up not because I didn't need any more sleep (I very needed it more than ever at this stage in the vacation), but
because it was useless to try and go back to sleep on that mattress.
Obviously, on this point alone I can't recommend the place.
I generally slept
early, woke early, and made sure I was out and about all day. This
(and getting stuck in a rainstorm sans umbrella, and a Yebisu-soaked New Year's
celebration) got me sick by the end of the vacation. I don't really
regret it, but take it easy, okay?
JAPAN GENERAL:
The biggest thing
that struck me about Japan is how easy it is to spend your change
there. It's all coinage from 1 to 500 yen, and there are vending
machines on every street corner willing to take all your coins from
10y up. Here in the States, change is dead money, baggage that
everybody wants to be rid of, but that's not at all the case over in
Japan. Nobody will get pissed off if you pay with your change: in
fact once I accidentally paid for a 500y magazine with a 10000y bill
and the nice lady at the newsstand counted out all that change
without so much as an awkward look. At home they'd hang you for that
mistake. So money feels really different over there.
The value of the
100y coin and the $1 bill is similar... but the former is much easier
to spend, either in the vending machine or at the arcade. There is a
reason there are so many coin-operated devices on the streets.
Taking the train is
expensive. It is also fast and on time... but it is expensive. You
get what you pay for, so you pay 200-400y depending on distance
($2.50-5?) for a one-way trip on the JR, the most popular line. I
definitely had forgotten to account for it in my vacation budget and
I'd estimate that I was paying 1500y a day since we were running
around so much. If you're around for a long time, look into a rail
pass, but I wasn't there long enough to justify that.
I
pretty much got lost every time I had to get back to the hotel on my
own, no matter how well I thought I knew what I was doing. A map is a
good thing to have (my phone kept dying!), but it seems to me that
the way you learn your way around in a neighborhood in Japan is to
actually spend a lot of time there, learn the landmarks and figure it
out. The address system is not like our own and you will not
be able to just count up and down streets like we do here in NYC. I
asked my friends to explain Japanese addresses to me a couple times
and I definitely never quite figured it out.
On the other hand I
found Tokyo a fun place to just wander around. Very old world, lots
of side streets, always something new to see that's hidden away
somewhere. Shinjuku was especially twisty!
I did not have any
weird foreigner-in-Japan experiences. The people I met, from cashiers
to pedestrians to people in lines to new-found drinking buddies, were
all extremely accommodating and polite. The weirdest it got was
walking down a few cars on the Skyliner train from Narita airport and
causing about half of the heads on the train to turn and stare at me by my existence.
Nobody at the otaku shops betrays any surprise to see a foreign
tourist, especially not during Comiket season. At peak post-Comiket
hours in Akiba there were a huge amount of foreigners on the streets.
THE NEIGHBORHOOD:
I
loved it out there! What you need to know about Akiba is that it is a
touristy shopping district. It's not a promised land or Anime IRL or
any of those trumped-up stories, but it is
pretty amazing. People come here, they get what they need-- whether
that is a rare item or dinner with maids-- and they leave. It's not
really a place you stick around at. But I'm a tourist, right? So
obviously it's my job to take my tourist money and enjoy all this
stuff as hard as I can.
Especially because
it was Comiket weekend, all these places were overflowing with otaku.
Comiket ends at 4 every day, and many of the hardcore otaku are long
done by morning. Their quest for the items they missed often takes
them all the way back here. And other folks just want to be in Akiba
after Comiket, to celebrate among their peers.
My
favorite group were the guys who cruised around town in their itasha
(cars painted all over with anime characters, sha
means “car” and ita means
“ouch” because it hurts to look at them) all night. I took a ton
of pictures of the block where they meet up, but I'd feel like a dick putting them out there because
of how Japanese folks are about photography. These guys are super
cool, no irony about it. It takes balls of steel to put yourself out
on the line like that, even in Akiba. Is it silly? Yeah, but they
know it too.
Because
Akiba's notoriety has blown up in the past few years, there's often
the question of how much is otaku and how much is otaku explotation,
and if there's truly a line between the two. At Don Quixote, the
megamart and single tackiest place in the universe-- they're so tacky
that their Akiba location is also home base of AKB48-- there's a
section called “moemiyage”. Omiyage
– souvenirs. Moemiyage
– figure it out. They sell tsundere cookies and sake voiced by Rie
Tanaka, and other sake with character designs by Aoki Ume-- not
making any of this up, okay? That's on one shelf at Donki. You'll
start saying Donki too; it's because of the theme
song.
Maybe it was
seasonal, but maids lined the streets with flyers in hand.
Everybody's trying to get you into their cafes, and these poor girls
are on the street all day. I took the same flyer from one maid three
times because I saw her once in the morning, once in the early
afternoon, and again at 9 PM... basically in the same spot. The
places they want you to go into vary in sketchiness, from the big
chain maidreamin to a “refresh” place whose entire flyer was just
pictures of schoolgirls' thighs. I threw that one out before I got to
the airport. (Azusa and Chris gave them to me.)
The maid cafe I
actually walked into was Schatzkiste, which I hope is where I go when
I die. It is a truly special place, where the maids ask you what your
favorite Gundam titles are and care very much about your answer. They
built all the furniture! They sell 4-panel comics about themselves!
So moe! I would like to sincerely thank the Schatzkiste staff for the
lovely experience. I would have stayed there for hours if I could
have.
A Guinness ice cream float at T.Y. Harbor in Shinagawa. Was not delivered by maids.
(More to come: all the rest of the otaku stops I made, my shopping, and of course all about the arcades.)
http://subatomicbrainfreeze.typepad.com/subatomic_brainfreeze/2013/01/i-went-i-went-to-japan-im-alright-im-alright-part-1.htmlAM2 FIGHTING BONANZA: Impressionstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345233f369e2017ee6307fee970d2012-12-12T16:16:27-05:002012-12-12T16:16:27-05:00Alright, I finally have occassion to talk about games on my own blog! I think this stuff is under the radar enough. A couple of weeks ago Sega released the first few titles in their Model 2 Collection on PSN/XBLA:...David Cabrera
Alright, I finally have occassion to talk about games on my own blog! I think this stuff is under the radar enough.
A couple of weeks ago Sega released the first few titles in their Model 2 Collection on PSN/XBLA: Virtua Fighter 2, Fighting Vipers, and Sonic the Fighters. I will reiterate my statement made on Twitter:
Virtua Fighter 2 is an essential title, the first step in 3D fighting games beyond the mere proof of concept that the original VF and Tekken represent. Though it is not really in the Western genre canon, it is a videogame with equivalent impact to Street Fighter 2.
Fighting Vipers is an early experiment with that formula, a game that borrows the basic framework of VF2 and goes crazy with it. Wacky character designs, wacky game design ideas: the game is just weird. A lot of the ideas come from 2D games, like air recovery (effectively eliminating the scripted juggle combo and changing the air situation into another guessing game) and attacks with auto-guard. A lot of the ideas worked their way into VF, like the interactive walls and Jane becoming Vanessa. The armor gimmick, on the other hand, never seen again. Fighting Vipers 2 badly needs a home port.
If Fighting Vipers is a crazy-mode version of VF2 then Sonic The Fighters is a crazy-mode version of Fighting Vipers. This is a rarely-seen game, only having been released for a console one time in the past, buried in a Sonic collection. It's a cute game for people to pick up and mash, but as a fighter, well..
It's practically an anti-fighting-game, in that the ideas you're used to from playing 3D games don't exist or just don't work. Blocking is heavily penalized, dodging doesn't really work, there's no defense. It's trying to construct a new game out of these elements, but I couldn't find it for the life of me. I played this online for a while and just did not have fun, despite wanting to like it. Just doing a single jab over and over again seemed to be the move of the game.
All of these ports are simple emulations of the original arcade games, and not the inferior Sega Saturn ports. I am fine with this-- the core original game is what is important to me-- but stuff like videos are out. The games are pure and accurate, but aside from online play and a command list, they lack any of the trimmings of a home port. Where is the training mode? I shouldn't have to set up an inactive Player 2 just to practice moves in this day and age.
Also, the online community for these games disappeared fast: I already have a very hard time getting a Fighting Vipers or VF2 match. Sonic is packed, of course.
Each game is $5: the collection will complete with Virtual On and Virtua Striker later.