Don't Open the Box: Tamagon Has Sinned, He Must Repent

I've done it! I've figured out Devil World!

Alas!

Tamagon, the main character is a creature that has been Left Behind. This happened because he committed the sin of gluttony. He loves sunny-side-up eggs. But because he did not repent to the Lord Jesus like the too-fat-to-walk riders of electronic chariots, he did not proceed to the Great Bacon Party in the Sky on the day of rapture.

Now he's stuck on Earth, which is infested with demons. Unbeknownst to Tamagon, the Devil controls his life! Tamagon must take control by finding the Lord (who grants the power to breathe fire to thy enemies via Holy Halitosis) and eating the blissful white leftover souls of people zapped away on the day of reckoning. (The real Light Souls starts here!)

The solitary eye is for cruising hot guys.

Speaking of enemies, notice how the only inhabitants left are Tamagon, demons and pink creatures? Pink? I think we all know what that means: God doesn't let gay people enter the Kingdom of Heaven! Want proof? Once confronted by the fires of the Lord, the gay people burn away into delicious eggs, obviously because of the deposit of excess reproductive material that has built up in their butts!

So after Tamagon finds enlightenment by devouring the souls of the righteous like some Walmart CEO, he must learn to piece together fragments of the Bible ripped apart by the demons and bring them to the Holy Church (aka McDonalds) where all the righteous convene with their unemployment dollars to in Bible Studies surrounded by healthy family food. There, Tamagon can learn to say, "Jesus, ba-ba, ba-ba-ba, I'm lovin' it!"

Struttin' in sexy red underwear!

 Once he does that, of course the Devil (who also is obviously gay because he wears  red hot pants) gets turned into a bat like all the characters in such popular demonic  witchcraft books like Twilight and leaves poor Tamagon alone.

 Alas! Every time Tamagon manages to banish Satan from his mind, he succumbs to the  temptations of the tree of knowledge and instead of being born again, eats his green  extra life. Thus the cycle of death and rebirth begins anew, sometimes with Tamagon  being squished by his own narrow view points and sin, until he learns the way of the  Lord.

 Gosh! When they say Miyamoto is a genius, they really mean it!

Best of Miiverse: 12/28

Yes, thank you, Peter.

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Best of Miiverse. Today we take a look at the Final Fantasy community. What sights shall we see when we delve into the minds of those who would pay 500 yen for an RPG released 26 years ago in this very same month? Peter, be a good lad, and fetch the doctor a chestnut.

Our first post comes from Hirotarou:

"Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but in elements like the dramatic scenario, the fact that your party doesn't line up to walk around, that the battle scenes are looked on from above the player's viewpoint, the comparatively somewhat friendly menu screen, and more, I can feel something like FF's obstinate rebellion against DQ, like they were saying, 'Well, one way or another I'm going to bare my teeth at you!' If not for DQ, perhaps FF never would have been born; if not for DQ, perhaps FF would not have become this big of a hit series. I can feel it in my bones, FF is what it is because DQ was there."

And then in his next post: "Putting that aside, the 'Why is it like this?' feel of the menu screen is pretty amazing. Looking at its friendliness, it's at a level that just makes you want to use 'kun' or 'san' or 'tan.' It might be interesting to make it into a character."

And this is the reply:

Menu-kun: "Poison!? Not cool, dude!"

 Moving on, we have this rather delightful specimen from Sho-imo:

I am...Super Monk!

This requires some explanation. I believe in English, Final Fantasy's Black Belt character is known as the Master when he undergoes a class change. In Japanese, he is a Monk and becomes a Super Monk at class change. Yes, that's right, Super Monk.

Not enough anime references for you? Well then, take this, courtesy of Maru:

Galaxy Express came out way before Final Fantasy. An influence?

If you don't know who that is on the left, why he's the captain of Galaxy Express 999! See, take a look:

Hmmm. No similarities at all.

Peter, my pain medication! Ahem, for our final specimen, I give you this excellent observation from Shun:

"Enemies that resemble human beings sure do have a lot of gold!"

Great Scott! I had never considered that before! Sticklers for detail, that rascally Square was!

That's enough for one day. Now Peter, wheel me into the spa, I need to soak.

Don't Open the Box: Lakitu is a Tongue Twister

Quiz! Who is that creepy guy in the clouds throwing his red spiny friends at you from his fortress of solitude? Yeah that guy, the one on the left. If you come from North America or an English-speaking country, you might know that his name is Lakitu.

A violent hikikomori

However if you come from my land and his country of origin (where apparently we speak the language of the moon), his name is Jugem, or more appropriately, Jugemu.

You might recognize the word Jugem from the item Jugem's Cloud, which in Super Mario Bros. 3 allowed you to skip levels! (Funny how today that doesn't seem to be as appealing a concept, isn't it? Nowadays hopping on his cloud will help you explore more of the level or open up new ones.)

Sure, in English, he lacks a tu, that makes perfect sense, considering the world of cloud ballerinas and their single tus. But Jugemu? That makes no sense at all!

Well, maybe, but I remember a childhood tongue twister that is known as Jugemu. It goes like this:

Jugemu jugemu
Gokou no surikire
Kaijari suigyou no
Suigyoumatsu unraimatsu fuuraimatsu
Kuu neru tokoro ni sumu tokoro
Yaburakouji no burakouji
Paipo paipo paipo no shuuringan
Shuuringan no guurindai
Guurindai no ponpokopii no ponpokonaa no
Choukyuumei no chousuke
   
I loved this tongue twister as a kid. I could always get to the middle part easily, my mouth rattling it off at 400 RPM, but the middle part (that starts with yaburakouji) always messed me up. It still does to this day. I can even do the last few lines perfectly. If it weren't that dastardly middle line and its pesky syllables.

The tongue twister was said to be created when a man asked a priest to name his child something that would ensure he had a long life. The priest came up with all sorts of long-lived metaphors, legends and expressions, which form each part of the verse. (The very name Jugemu is an amalgamation of Japanese characters meaning "no end to the life line.") Can you imagine someone being named that? "Jugemu jugemu, gokou no surikire ... blah blah blah ... shuuringan ... blah blah blah ... chousuke, can you pass me the salt?"

If you are fluent in Mushroom Kingdom common sense, like all right-thinking people are, you will remember that Lakitu/Jugemu tends to come back no matter how many times you kill him and will follow you to the ends of the earth (or at least the stage). Do you think that's why Nintendo named him Jugemu? Can you say the tongue twister as fast as you can?

Don't Open the Box: Columns

Face it: dodge ball is the Dark Souls of recess. Maybe the stories don't have any truth in their brittle bones, but I hear that its being banned across schools in the US for being too unfair and promoting violence.

I remember dodge ball in elementary school. It was both infuriating and a lot of fun. People singled me out. Fights broke out. Kids were massive dicks. I think it did me a lot of good. I learned something valuable: sometimes the world is out to get you and its your job to get out of the way until you can do something about it. I like the unfairness of not getting to play at all if you're not good enough, especially when I could inflict it on others.

Dodge ball is a game where you can let out your inner jerk. The greatest of Greek catharsis can be channeled into that ball. Dodge ball should be enshrined as a wonderful little microcosm game for teaching children how harsh life can be.

But instead of having children play games with unclear life lessons where they might have to internalize, reflect and come to their own conclusions, I think we should invest in 3DSes preloaded with the virtual console release of Columns. The easy mode on this sucker is so easy, it reinvents the easy mode. It a shining innovation amongst easy modes. The most inept child could get extremely high scores. Think of the self esteem it would boost! Think of the smiles on millions of improperly diagnosed children on the autism spectrum! And it has shiny jewels that mesmerize as they fade away, symbolizing the fruitlessness of material collection. What else do you need?

Columns is one of those early puzzle droppers. Its fuel is the endless hunger for a better score, not vs. play against the computer or humans, or experience leveling in an RPG tunnel, two roads people would have us say the puzzler evolved into. The score you see up there was easily procured within 20 minutes by messing around on easy. As long as you vaguely try to arrange the gems together into patterns of three or more diagonally, horizontally or vertically you are bound to run into combinations of pattern completions sparkle and disappear that can last for a minute or more of you simply watching the unexplained mass disappearance of gems unfold. Your score blossoms. Your self-esteem grows.

To the left you can see what happened after I triggered one simple pattern erasure near the top of the screen. It looked like I was going to wipe out, but no. It was gem genocide. The Hitler of precious rocks would have been proud.

This could be so valuable in a school setting. Think of the life lessons it could teach! If you bumble along with the basics for long enough it doesn't matter if you get any better or put any effort into anything; matters will clear up all around you with no real punishment. Obviously, this is a much more realistic lesson than dodge ball could ever teach. A great deal of these kids will go onto jobs re-arranging the valuables of others where their effort and hard work will never be properly appreciated. It's best to let them know they can get by through putting in the cool minimum and not think about anything else too hard, except maybe the weekend.

Letters From Our Readers: A Recommendation from Yzmrati

Dear Sazanami,

There is fortune here! Yesterday, I find a great game for my son's 3D's! I download the virtual console thinking game for him because his mother complains he does too much bang killing. So I go to check it out, you know, make sure there are no guns or guts in it. At first, I think "What is this?" but now I think is brilliant.

It concerns the drop of many pieces of four and how you must line them up on the bottom so that the dentist must not fill the cavities. The sound effects are amiable! When you line up the long dotty grey piece to get four lines at once, the virtual console farts! My son will giggle! He will love it. (He is six and he has my eyes. His mother's boobs too. I think we have been feeding him too much of the puddings.)

Anyway, what is best about this thinking game is the life lessons it imparts on our youth. Good work does not leave holes, or else it comes crashing down and we do not get the high score when we die. Sometimes the mood is best for waiting and she will be very happy when the large hard one slides into her. Our score will be high! Sometimes you wait and wait and the good one does not come along, so you settle for plumbing job in east end with dumpy waitress. It is not worth getting game over waiting for life to throw you a bone. If you don't cover up your mistakes quickly, someone will make noise like choking chicken and it will be over anyway. Etc, etc.

My son will learn so many good life lessons! I can't believe more people don't know about this game. Even though it is black and white, it is come recommended (kids do not need the color, is luxury).

-Yzmrati

Don't Open the Box: Wrecking Crew

When you mess up so badly you can't win the game anymore, press select to go back to the title screen. Wrecking Crew is like taking care of vicious animals. Observe their behavior so they don't bite you. Press select to call it a day. Go to the hospital on the way home from work and bandage your wounds. Think about what you did. Start again another day.

Evil Pringles

 cans

I am smarter than horror movie characters. I would not get trapped. I would not get killed. I would be the final boss. But in Wrecking Crew, red and purple Pringles cans chase me. They get me in horror movie slasher situations. And then I cannot outsmart a 20 year old AI. At least in games you have extra lives. Mario is reborn smarter, but I get sadder and sadder. Evil potato chips. Chip Star tastes better anyway.