A while ago, I related how the Mario enemy Lakitu's Japanese name, Jugem, is a throwback to a Japanese tongue twister and some folklore that many children know.
Let's delve into some of the Japanese behind the lyric. As with the last time we did a Japanese Lesson, there will be a lot of Japanese characters in this post, so it's best if you view it on a device that can read them properly.
If you remember the anecdote attached to the tongue twister, it was about a priest giving a young boy a name that would grant him a long, long life. So the priest gives him a name with all sorts of meanings that could suggest many years without death. (I feel like the next sentence is going to be about what the Polish guy said to the Mexican. Oh well.)
Here is the tongue-twister once again:
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
Now, what does it mean? Well, even if you are native Japanese, some of it is a bit head-scratchy, so we'll take each line one post at a time.
Let's start with the title of the tongue twister. Jugemu jugemu (寿限無、寿限無) is combination of three kanji that means something close to "everlasting life" or "life without limits." But be careful, this doesn't actually mean immortal to a modern Japanese ear, like the word fushi (不死), literally "without death" or fujimi (不死身), or "indestructible," do. Please note the second word is closer to the impervious definition of immortal, and often is used to describe somebody with an indomitable spirit, who never gives up. Another word for immortality would be furou (不老), or somebody who never ages. You can quite often see the two terms put together, as furoufushi (不老不死).
So please don't go around using the word jugemu to mean "everlasting life," or "everlasting gobstopper." The reason it means that in this special case is because ju (寿) is a character of celebration and can also be read as kotobuki -- the whole thing kind of comes across as "cheers for a good, long life." You'll see this kanji particularly at this time of year when a new year rolls around, or at certain birthdays, to wish the person a continued happy, long life.
It is quite important to remember that you will not see this kanji a whole lot in relation to life. jumyo （寿命) or "life span" is one word that comes up in daily parlance. You could use it to describe the life span of anything, from a planet to a tree to a person. But if you wanted to use life as in the human philosophical concept, jinsei (人生) would be better, as in "My life sucks" or ore no jinsei ha saitei da yo (俺の人生は最低だよ）. Whereas seimei (生命) describes all types of life (and is another word that is derived by repeating two kanji with the same rough meaning, as the second one, inochi (命) also means life, but in a more holistic way). If you wanted to talk about your current life you'd use a word like seikatsu (生活). This describes more of your daily habits, routines, where you live, how much you wank, those types of things. [Note that you may recognize the sei (生) character as meaning life, and it does, among other things, but so does the katsu (活) character. In fact, the verb for life commonly uses the former, but sometimes, for poetic effect, will use the latter. For instance, ikaseru (活かせる) is likely to be used to mean "make something come to life" or "make the most of something."] So if you're trying to communicate more clearly in Japanese, one thing you should definitely watch out for are the nuances in what types of things different kanji with the same basic meaning can convey.
So let's review the meanings of life:
sei 生 - the most basic, humanistic term for life
inochi 命 - life, as in the soul or spirit that burns within an individual until it dies
katsu 活 - activity, animation, life as the expression of movement
kotobuki 寿 - life as a happy congratulation of its continuance, also a piece of the word sushi by the way
(Unfortunately, almost none of these kanji or terms are commonly used to mean "lives" as in chances to try again in a game. That's a special discussion for another day.)
Meanwhile, gemu is actually a reversal of mugen (無限), which means "unlimited." Another way to say that in Japanese is kagiri ga nai (限りがない), which is simply saying a very similar thing to "there's no limit." (If you have absolutely no imagination for language, you might think "there's no limit" and "unlimited" mean the same thing. If so, you have my pity.) These days, nai often does not have a kanji attached to it, but if it does, it is most often the one we see at the end of jugemu, in this form: 無い.
So we can parcel out the pieces of the word to mean "may there be no limit to your happy, long life."
Right then, now that you've gotten a handle on life (all thanks to my blog) tomorrow's post will be about the second line, gokou no surikire, which is far more rooted in history and philosophy, and thus much harder to explain. Be ready, be vigilant, strike while the Japanese is hot!
1/04/2014
Futuresonic Gamesounds
The unique thing about games is you interact with them?
Bull huckey! I can cross out the words in a book, write notes in its margins, underline it, chuck it across the room, reluctantly pick it up, decide to skip to the end. It might mean something very different on a re-read; after my great grandfrog died, in the rain by a train or when I have become 20 or 40, or after my cousin read it and thought my favorite character was the most annoying and then I spit in his socks out of revenge.
Yes, but you play with games, that sir, is the key!
Bull huckey. I play with the ideas I get from books, I play with playlists on a iPod while doing homework, I play with my roommate when he's trying to relax and I put ob ear-destroying Guitar Vader, I watch people play with repeating and editing movies in different ways. Play is a broad concept.
Okay, but you are passive in other forms of entertainment. Maybe you are, you unwashed, unthinking, beer-guzzling philistine! My mind is a fire and the fireworks are my reaction. You can do it too, you've got one that's just as capable as mine -- you just might not be conscious of how much you're using it. You're reacting to how plausible the plot is, you're covering your eyes at the gore, throwing spoons in the theater revival, repeating the lines to your friends or singing impromptu in the shower. These are not passive reactions.
Ah, but the work doesn't change. Fundamentally, on a physical level, no. But the perception of it can and perception is a great chunk of reality.
I think you can say whether we are reacting, interacting or playing with whatever we are witnessing, consuming, ignoring or absorbing, it becomes slightly like a relationship. I think many people say this in a smart-lady-with-a-an-accent-giving-a-speech way. ("Our relationship has changed and that's what I wanted to represent in this exhibit.")
So I don't think it's the reactions, play or interaction, its the way we form a relationship with a game in our language and thinking. I've often thought this was curious. "That game cheats!" claims a player who falls into a pit.
"This game is a bastard!" say countless Souls series players.
"Oh come on, just a little bit more," someone bargains near the finish line.
"I tried to work with it, but I wasn't getting anywhere," says somebody who doesn't get all the hype.
"I am in love with your eyes -- cross that -- this level/character."
It might be my imagination, but I feel like I hear more personification of the work itself within a game then I do with other forms of narrative, entertainment or amusement design. Whenever I hear the same types of relationship-sounding sentences in other works, they are usually in reference to the creators or the people who like them.
I think this is a hint. I feel like people often are making a mistake when they say that games are different every time you play them because other, more static works can be too, whether they are a different edition, remix or language of the same work, or because the person or approach to experiencing them is different. However, I get the strange sensation the longer I spend with a game, the more I feel its analogous to interacting with an animate being.
I know my favorite books well and I can remember when I just met them. I can compare them in relationship terms, of course. But when I reflect on my favorite games, I feel a much stronger connection to the analogy. Devilish Brain Training is a game I've spent a lot of time with. There was an awkward phase where I didn't know it very well, or wasn't sure I wanted to get to know it better. Then as we became friends, I found all sorts of new things about it. Slowly I got used to its quirks. There were unexpected realizations that I can look back on through my daily repetitious play. I got addicted to one part of it and for a while that's all I could see. Then I slowly came back around to see the whole picture again. Sometimes after an extended absence, I would learn to appreciate its quirky delights. Sometimes I got annoyed by the things it would do; things I knew very well it would do, but tolerated them anyway.
If I try to make this same comparison to a book, it breaks in several places. Something I would potentially read every day like a book of great quotes, a religious text or poem book, something like that doesn't give me the same unexpected realizations because it does not remember like a game does, it does not vary significantly like a game does, and most importantly it does not offer a different emotional reaction based on chance. The closest part to a relationship is getting caught up on one extraordinary aspect and then pulling out to see a big picture. The awkwardness could be compared to getting used to prose, but because it doesn't throw back fail states, rewards, positive or negative reinforcement based on my input, feedback refusal or encouragement, it is far less like a blossoming relationship.
I can get used to an artist's quirks or a director's quirks, but in this case I'm often reacting to the creator, not the work itself and the quirks tend to be much more varied among the users. Everyone always says an aspect of Spielberg's works is sentimentality. People say Miyamoto's works are often light and happy. But I am not reacting to Miyamoto's quirks when I say "damn you, Mario," when I fail to line up the turtle guys to get 1UPs. I am reacting to something a little more like a relationship. I set up an expectation by initiating contact and manipulating something. It reacted. I continued along with my plans. It didn't work out. Can you really say you're doing the same thing when you get confused by the chronology of a Quentin Tarantino plot? I think you could say its a relationship to the extent that you can take on the role of someone grading or evaluating something else, like a teacher reading a student's paper or a friend offering advice. But I don't think you can say our relationships with those other mediums change as quickly, vary as much, or veer into desperate corners as drunkenly as game relationships do.
Music, these days can often have a lot more of this kind of dynamic. You can take on a lot more varied roles as its appreciator, remixer, editor in your list of tracks, cutting out the intro you hate, and it implies mastery of a sort. You have to build a certain amount of knowledge with the medium and how it works if your going to remix it, post a Youtube music video, or even just convert the format on your computer or do things like crop it or adjust the decibel playback or equalizer. Adjusting various settings on your TV so you get whatever effect you might like doesn't quite cut it. Writing parodies of book sections or doing off the wall things with your webcam is close, but not the same, because often there is a gap between the book and movie and your new idea, whereas with music, the two are very close together in a way that I think resembles games.
Many people say the pacing is off in games, but I think they are wrong. Games, instead have things like tempo, rhythm, beat, breakdown, choruses, refrains and everybody can interact with music on a level where others can easily evaluate how skilled they are. This doesn't seem to happen very much with books or movies. People don't often congratulate you on your skilled reproduction of When Harry, Met Sally or The Grapes of Wrath. They do? What on earth do you for a living? Anyway, I guess reciting poetry or being able to act out a few lines is close, but notice how both bring sound and musical concepts into it?
But there are still limits to how we can form a relationship with music. I kind of doubt anyone has ever said of a music track, "I swear, if it does that one more time, I give up today!" That's something we say of animate beings when they do something that annoys us, because we know they can stop, but more importantly we know have some sort of agency that hopefully make them stop. Have you ever threatened to The Black Eyed Peas to stop saying "Immabe" and put some real lyrics into their song the next time it plays at your supermarket? You do? Well then, you have unique relationships don't you.
So no, I don't think the unique thing about games is that your interact with them. I think the unique thing about games is that our interactions with them form more complex relationships than some other forms of amusement and edification.
Bull huckey! I can cross out the words in a book, write notes in its margins, underline it, chuck it across the room, reluctantly pick it up, decide to skip to the end. It might mean something very different on a re-read; after my great grandfrog died, in the rain by a train or when I have become 20 or 40, or after my cousin read it and thought my favorite character was the most annoying and then I spit in his socks out of revenge.
Yes, but you play with games, that sir, is the key!
Bull huckey. I play with the ideas I get from books, I play with playlists on a iPod while doing homework, I play with my roommate when he's trying to relax and I put ob ear-destroying Guitar Vader, I watch people play with repeating and editing movies in different ways. Play is a broad concept.
Okay, but you are passive in other forms of entertainment. Maybe you are, you unwashed, unthinking, beer-guzzling philistine! My mind is a fire and the fireworks are my reaction. You can do it too, you've got one that's just as capable as mine -- you just might not be conscious of how much you're using it. You're reacting to how plausible the plot is, you're covering your eyes at the gore, throwing spoons in the theater revival, repeating the lines to your friends or singing impromptu in the shower. These are not passive reactions.
Ah, but the work doesn't change. Fundamentally, on a physical level, no. But the perception of it can and perception is a great chunk of reality.
I think you can say whether we are reacting, interacting or playing with whatever we are witnessing, consuming, ignoring or absorbing, it becomes slightly like a relationship. I think many people say this in a smart-lady-with-a-an-accent-giving-a-speech way. ("Our relationship has changed and that's what I wanted to represent in this exhibit.")
So I don't think it's the reactions, play or interaction, its the way we form a relationship with a game in our language and thinking. I've often thought this was curious. "That game cheats!" claims a player who falls into a pit.
"This game is a bastard!" say countless Souls series players.
"Oh come on, just a little bit more," someone bargains near the finish line.
"I tried to work with it, but I wasn't getting anywhere," says somebody who doesn't get all the hype.
"I am in love with your eyes -- cross that -- this level/character."
It might be my imagination, but I feel like I hear more personification of the work itself within a game then I do with other forms of narrative, entertainment or amusement design. Whenever I hear the same types of relationship-sounding sentences in other works, they are usually in reference to the creators or the people who like them.
I think this is a hint. I feel like people often are making a mistake when they say that games are different every time you play them because other, more static works can be too, whether they are a different edition, remix or language of the same work, or because the person or approach to experiencing them is different. However, I get the strange sensation the longer I spend with a game, the more I feel its analogous to interacting with an animate being.
I know my favorite books well and I can remember when I just met them. I can compare them in relationship terms, of course. But when I reflect on my favorite games, I feel a much stronger connection to the analogy. Devilish Brain Training is a game I've spent a lot of time with. There was an awkward phase where I didn't know it very well, or wasn't sure I wanted to get to know it better. Then as we became friends, I found all sorts of new things about it. Slowly I got used to its quirks. There were unexpected realizations that I can look back on through my daily repetitious play. I got addicted to one part of it and for a while that's all I could see. Then I slowly came back around to see the whole picture again. Sometimes after an extended absence, I would learn to appreciate its quirky delights. Sometimes I got annoyed by the things it would do; things I knew very well it would do, but tolerated them anyway.
If I try to make this same comparison to a book, it breaks in several places. Something I would potentially read every day like a book of great quotes, a religious text or poem book, something like that doesn't give me the same unexpected realizations because it does not remember like a game does, it does not vary significantly like a game does, and most importantly it does not offer a different emotional reaction based on chance. The closest part to a relationship is getting caught up on one extraordinary aspect and then pulling out to see a big picture. The awkwardness could be compared to getting used to prose, but because it doesn't throw back fail states, rewards, positive or negative reinforcement based on my input, feedback refusal or encouragement, it is far less like a blossoming relationship.
I can get used to an artist's quirks or a director's quirks, but in this case I'm often reacting to the creator, not the work itself and the quirks tend to be much more varied among the users. Everyone always says an aspect of Spielberg's works is sentimentality. People say Miyamoto's works are often light and happy. But I am not reacting to Miyamoto's quirks when I say "damn you, Mario," when I fail to line up the turtle guys to get 1UPs. I am reacting to something a little more like a relationship. I set up an expectation by initiating contact and manipulating something. It reacted. I continued along with my plans. It didn't work out. Can you really say you're doing the same thing when you get confused by the chronology of a Quentin Tarantino plot? I think you could say its a relationship to the extent that you can take on the role of someone grading or evaluating something else, like a teacher reading a student's paper or a friend offering advice. But I don't think you can say our relationships with those other mediums change as quickly, vary as much, or veer into desperate corners as drunkenly as game relationships do.
Music, these days can often have a lot more of this kind of dynamic. You can take on a lot more varied roles as its appreciator, remixer, editor in your list of tracks, cutting out the intro you hate, and it implies mastery of a sort. You have to build a certain amount of knowledge with the medium and how it works if your going to remix it, post a Youtube music video, or even just convert the format on your computer or do things like crop it or adjust the decibel playback or equalizer. Adjusting various settings on your TV so you get whatever effect you might like doesn't quite cut it. Writing parodies of book sections or doing off the wall things with your webcam is close, but not the same, because often there is a gap between the book and movie and your new idea, whereas with music, the two are very close together in a way that I think resembles games.
Many people say the pacing is off in games, but I think they are wrong. Games, instead have things like tempo, rhythm, beat, breakdown, choruses, refrains and everybody can interact with music on a level where others can easily evaluate how skilled they are. This doesn't seem to happen very much with books or movies. People don't often congratulate you on your skilled reproduction of When Harry, Met Sally or The Grapes of Wrath. They do? What on earth do you for a living? Anyway, I guess reciting poetry or being able to act out a few lines is close, but notice how both bring sound and musical concepts into it?
But there are still limits to how we can form a relationship with music. I kind of doubt anyone has ever said of a music track, "I swear, if it does that one more time, I give up today!" That's something we say of animate beings when they do something that annoys us, because we know they can stop, but more importantly we know have some sort of agency that hopefully make them stop. Have you ever threatened to The Black Eyed Peas to stop saying "Immabe" and put some real lyrics into their song the next time it plays at your supermarket? You do? Well then, you have unique relationships don't you.
So no, I don't think the unique thing about games is that your interact with them. I think the unique thing about games is that our interactions with them form more complex relationships than some other forms of amusement and edification.
1/03/2014
Don't Open the Box: Tamagon Has Sinned, He Must Repent
I've done it! I've figured out Devil World!
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!)
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!"
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!
 |
| Alas! |
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. |
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! |
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!
1/02/2014
Don't Open the Box: Rumor Has It
 | |||
| "Hya hya hya!" |
If you're like me and the sound of rumors is like the sound of an irritating pop star -- something you don't want to be subjected to, but get curious about when you are -- then I've got a big one for you! Hya hya hya!
Hundreds of years ago there were apparently two feuding brothers in the hoodskank ghetto of South Kakariko. These two brothers wouldn't speak to each other until a shiny green hero blew down their walls. Then it was said that the two brothers reconciled. But shortly after their reconciliation the shiny green hero was said to set sail for new lands to polish his prowess. Hya hya hya!
Unfortunately, it would seem that younger brother had a thing for the hero. The elder brother, feeling pity for his sibling's unrequited love, sought out a suitable replacement companion for him. Well, he couldn't just go around asking people if they enjoyed male flesh instruments, so they say he got really good at ferreting out rumors. Hya hya hya!
Eventually, his brother moved away and became a hermit. Word has it that as the family line continued, the elder brother's rumor savvy was inherited and passed on to each generation as the Hero of Rumors. Sometimes, for one reason or another, a member of the rumor family takes residence in a cave just like the hermity younger brother. I hear there's someone like that in Northern Hyrule, where the bumpkins live. If you're clever, you might be able to meet him, but he's kind of in the forest. Hya hya hya!
12/28/2013
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:
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.
12/01/2013
Tasting the Feast: Excave
A donut fell on my mom and crushed her, so I decided to try a game! This time, I went for Excave, a recently distributed new action RPG on the Japanese e-shop by Mechanic Arms, the lovely people known for the incredibly unique DSiware RPG The Enigmatic Mini-Games, a scrumptious little treat that combined Wario Ware with a dungeon RPG.
The dungeon is getting unruly! The king is restless! Mercenaries seek fame! Off to the dungeons, my lads!
As I set foot in the dungeon, I notice two things: 1) I'm not in 3D, what's up with that? I haven't been a two-dimensional oaf since I used to look down on women, only be interested in sports and pick on gay people! 2) I must have eaten too much of Aunt Harriet's black sugar pumpkin pie because I move like molasses.
Suddenly, a voice echoes from the heavens: "Equip some armor, you blinkin' idiot!" Ah! I see, choosing to equip various things in 3 armor slots from the 16 item slots below that I prepared before I delved inside (did you catch all that?) lets me to choose whether I want to focus on high hit points, high attack or faster movement speed! Interesting! I can also equip one weapon and one item, magic spell or shield to use, though I have to be careful, because the shields and weapons were made amateur blacksmiths and they deteriorate. Furthermore, the bottom screen is used very well to throw away useless items in a trash bin, re-equip different things, and drag potions to your mouth to drink them.
Whoa nelly! That thunder magic spell was the business! I just let Zeus's lightning rip, and attracted all the slimes to the slaughter as they walked right into a stationary bolt of patented electrical nightmare! It was like cooking Lima beans and green jelly beans using with a mounted taser.
Hmmm, there are lots of keys. All sorts of different colors. This is one of those situations where you have to be careful how much you take, and what you keep, huh? Just then, the voice from the heavens echoes again: "Press and hold the X button in your heart to conjure a magic rune that will transport you back to town." Ah ha! So this is one of those thrift store dungeons where they expect you to go back to town to discard items regularly and manage your inventory that way. That's why my mom named me Excave! It's that whole balancing exploration with escape mechanic!
The voice thunders again, "And read my diary notes, you nincompoop!" Hmm, I do have a lot of pieces of parchment in my inventory. Oh look, they contain hints and directions from the Diary of the Dungeon God, how helpful, yet politely unobtrusive! No tutorials here!
Well, I've only delved into the dungeon for 15 minutes, but already I've traveled multiple floors, accessed a dangerous trap room where I was ambushed by slimes, discovered the satisfying clunk and clash of two distinct types of weapons with their own animations and the need to manage your inventory between two different characters who can equip different things.
I think this dungeon has potential! Let's keep going!
The dungeon is getting unruly! The king is restless! Mercenaries seek fame! Off to the dungeons, my lads!
As I set foot in the dungeon, I notice two things: 1) I'm not in 3D, what's up with that? I haven't been a two-dimensional oaf since I used to look down on women, only be interested in sports and pick on gay people! 2) I must have eaten too much of Aunt Harriet's black sugar pumpkin pie because I move like molasses.
Suddenly, a voice echoes from the heavens: "Equip some armor, you blinkin' idiot!" Ah! I see, choosing to equip various things in 3 armor slots from the 16 item slots below that I prepared before I delved inside (did you catch all that?) lets me to choose whether I want to focus on high hit points, high attack or faster movement speed! Interesting! I can also equip one weapon and one item, magic spell or shield to use, though I have to be careful, because the shields and weapons were made amateur blacksmiths and they deteriorate. Furthermore, the bottom screen is used very well to throw away useless items in a trash bin, re-equip different things, and drag potions to your mouth to drink them.
 |
| "Do your inventory chores or no successful dungeon exploration for you!" "But ma!" "No buts! I bought you that touch screen to make it easier and more fun, I expect you to use it!" |
Hmmm, there are lots of keys. All sorts of different colors. This is one of those situations where you have to be careful how much you take, and what you keep, huh? Just then, the voice from the heavens echoes again: "Press and hold the X button in your heart to conjure a magic rune that will transport you back to town." Ah ha! So this is one of those thrift store dungeons where they expect you to go back to town to discard items regularly and manage your inventory that way. That's why my mom named me Excave! It's that whole balancing exploration with escape mechanic!
The voice thunders again, "And read my diary notes, you nincompoop!" Hmm, I do have a lot of pieces of parchment in my inventory. Oh look, they contain hints and directions from the Diary of the Dungeon God, how helpful, yet politely unobtrusive! No tutorials here!
Well, I've only delved into the dungeon for 15 minutes, but already I've traveled multiple floors, accessed a dangerous trap room where I was ambushed by slimes, discovered the satisfying clunk and clash of two distinct types of weapons with their own animations and the need to manage your inventory between two different characters who can equip different things.
I think this dungeon has potential! Let's keep going!
11/25/2013
At the Dragon Palace: Ruta and Better Living Through Puzzles
Crazy Fat Ethel wouldn't return my Fig Newtons, so I decided to play a game instead! This time it was the tricky puzzle game, Ruta!
---
Operator: Thank you for calling Better Living Through Puzzles, how may I help you?
Girl: Yeah, hi, I just got here today and I'm trying to move into my apartment, but there's all these barrels and pillars and creepy rock face people in my way.
Operator: Okay, what you're going to want to do is press the arrow keys to move around, press Z to generate a flaming ball of fire from the palm of your hands, X to go back to the main menu and C to commit suicide.
Girl: What?!
Operator: Glad you're following me. Now then, do you see a shiny golden key?
Girl: Uh, hold on, there it is. Yeah, I see it. Is that my apartment key?
Operator: No, that's just the key to the first level. What's your name?
Ruta: Ruta.
Operator: Your apartment is on level 51, you'll have to pass 50 levels to go there.
Ruta: How do I do that?
Operator: Get the key and stick it into the keyhole you see on the ground. You should then be sucked into an inter-dimensional vortex and transported to the next floor. You'll see we've also generated a nifty clear animation for you. Enjoy.
Ruta: Wait, I have to do this 50 times.
Operator: Yes, but don't fall into the gaps, or you'll lose hearts and lives.
Ruta: What?!
Operator: Well, if you want you can always get them back to start all over again.
Ruta: I don't wanna die!
Operator: Nobody does honey.
Ruta: Well, if I can just get them all back by re-starting or continuing, what's the point of them?
Operator: Tradition, honey.
Ruta: ...fine. But can you help? The key seems to be behind a barrel and I can't pull it out.
Operator: Of course you can't, we don't believe in being pully with objects. It objectifies them. You can push them around all you like, but don't you dare pull them!
Ruta: Why do I have to do this?
Operator: At Better Living Through Puzzles, we believe that life can be improved by enhancing the mundane tasks such as opening a door through the fun integration of multi-level puzzle dungeons. Better Living Through Puzzles, for a better, smarter tomorrow.
Ruta: So every time I want to enter my new home, I have to go through all 50 levels of this thing?
Operator: Yep, have a nice day and don't let the bats that appear later on kill you!
*click*
---
Operator: Thank you for calling Better--
Ruta: Why did you put bats in here?
Operator: We find they add a nice new twist to the rooms and keep them from becoming monotonous.
Ruta: Yeah, well when I get hit by them, they take my hearts and then I die in the middle of a puzzle!
Operator: At Better Living Through Puzzles, we believe in teaching residents to protect their hearts, lest they be hurt.
Ruta: How am I supposed to get rid of them?
Operator: You know that frustration that you can't just walk into your damn house? You can manifest that into a flaming ball of fire and shoot that at them.
Ruta: Do you sell laser bursts from the eyes for when I encounter creepy, leering old men on the subway?
Operator: 'Fraid not. Thanks for calling and for heaven's sakes, don't die.
---
Operator: Thank you for calling--
Ruta: I notice that as the puzzles start introducing new ideas and get more complex, there's a host of different ways to complete them. If I do it particularly well, can I get a bonus, like an extra life?
Operator: Thank you praising our in-depth personality monitoring system, where the puzzle solvers find solutions based on the way they think. You are free to work out a variety of different ways to complete each stage. We're especially proud that unlike other inter-dimensional apartment challenge complexes, our puzzles change based on how you think them through and what type of player you are. We reflect the diverse personalities of our customers--
Ruta: Are you reading from a script?
Operator: At Better Living Through Puzzles, we believe in increasing reading comprehension, by using only English in our puzzles, even though our manufacturer is Japanese. Anyone can play! Reading is good for you!
Ruta: Can you just tell me whether I can get a life or something for doing well?
Operator: Don't try to get a life, do well with the one you have. That's our motto at Better Living Through Puzzles.
Ruta: Fine. Gotta go. If I don't complete these damn puzzles soon, the milk and yogurt I bought from the store is going to go bad.
---
Operator: Thank you for--
Ruta: Hello again. You know the music here is nice and catchy, but there's only two types, and it's so short and loops so much it kind of gets on my nerves.
Operator: I'm sorry, sir, I'm afraid that's all we've got.
Ruta: Well, put on the radio then. Some smooth jazz would be nice.
Operator: None of that, either.
Ruta: Not even a little saxophone playing by a balding, middle-aged man?
Operator: Not even a little. Goodbye and thank you for calling Better Living Through Puzzles.
---
Operator: Hi, Ruta.
Ruta: How'd you know it was me this time?
Operator: Lucky guess!
Ruta: Okay. Well, here's the thing. These puzzles are getting bloody hard! There's warp tiles and directional arrows and crumbling blocks and frozen blocks and switches that raise blocks and blocks that change the direction of the directional arrows, how am I supposed to keep track of all the possibilities?
Operator: Use your prefrontal cortex!
Ruta: My what?
Operator: Better Living Through Puzzles is designed to stop you from being a troglodyte and reduce procrastination by making you think several steps ahead. If you don't, you'll burn your bridges and die. We think this a healthy lesson to teach our children.
Ruta: Aren't I your resident?
Operator: Oh, child please. The sad fact is that more and more people are giving into the urges and demands of their limbic system, which is a buried in a primitive part of the brain and causes you to eat ice cream until you get dumped by your boyfriend instead of thinking toward your bright, sexy future in the Bahamas together! If only your prefrontal cortex had been stronger and you were able to think ahead several steps so you don't meet disaster and regret!
Ruta: Where are your getting this?
Operator: You know that guy who designed the robot masters?
Ruta: Dr. Wily?
Operator: Yeah, he told us it would strengthen the prefrontal cortex.
Ruta: ...
Operator: Hello? Hello?
---
Rating: Three rutabagas out of an unmolested lamb.
Comes recommended. Does not include above story. In English too! Download it here, at Japanese software portal site, Vector. (For those who don't know Japanese, click here where it says Download Now in green.) Some other games by the same group can be found here.
If you need help navigating either of those Japanese sites, let me know in the comments! And don't forget to remind Crazy Fat Ethel to bring back my Fig Newtons!
---
Operator: Thank you for calling Better Living Through Puzzles, how may I help you?
Girl: Yeah, hi, I just got here today and I'm trying to move into my apartment, but there's all these barrels and pillars and creepy rock face people in my way.
Operator: Okay, what you're going to want to do is press the arrow keys to move around, press Z to generate a flaming ball of fire from the palm of your hands, X to go back to the main menu and C to commit suicide.
Girl: What?!
Operator: Glad you're following me. Now then, do you see a shiny golden key?
 |
| Does this make me a keyblade master? |
Girl: Uh, hold on, there it is. Yeah, I see it. Is that my apartment key?
Operator: No, that's just the key to the first level. What's your name?
Ruta: Ruta.
Operator: Your apartment is on level 51, you'll have to pass 50 levels to go there.
Ruta: How do I do that?
Operator: Get the key and stick it into the keyhole you see on the ground. You should then be sucked into an inter-dimensional vortex and transported to the next floor. You'll see we've also generated a nifty clear animation for you. Enjoy.
 |
| The first stage already contains a trick and by the third stage the game has completely warmed up into something dastardly, tricky and vermiciously knid. |
Ruta: Wait, I have to do this 50 times.
Operator: Yes, but don't fall into the gaps, or you'll lose hearts and lives.
Ruta: What?!
Operator: Well, if you want you can always get them back to start all over again.
Ruta: I don't wanna die!
Operator: Nobody does honey.
Ruta: Well, if I can just get them all back by re-starting or continuing, what's the point of them?
Operator: Tradition, honey.
Ruta: ...fine. But can you help? The key seems to be behind a barrel and I can't pull it out.
Operator: Of course you can't, we don't believe in being pully with objects. It objectifies them. You can push them around all you like, but don't you dare pull them!
 |
| Don't push my barrels, or I'll make you sit in the car again! |
Ruta: Why do I have to do this?
Operator: At Better Living Through Puzzles, we believe that life can be improved by enhancing the mundane tasks such as opening a door through the fun integration of multi-level puzzle dungeons. Better Living Through Puzzles, for a better, smarter tomorrow.
Ruta: So every time I want to enter my new home, I have to go through all 50 levels of this thing?
Operator: Yep, have a nice day and don't let the bats that appear later on kill you!
*click*
---
Operator: Thank you for calling Better--
Ruta: Why did you put bats in here?
Operator: We find they add a nice new twist to the rooms and keep them from becoming monotonous.
Ruta: Yeah, well when I get hit by them, they take my hearts and then I die in the middle of a puzzle!
Operator: At Better Living Through Puzzles, we believe in teaching residents to protect their hearts, lest they be hurt.
Ruta: How am I supposed to get rid of them?
Operator: You know that frustration that you can't just walk into your damn house? You can manifest that into a flaming ball of fire and shoot that at them.
 |
| Batman might not approve, but Ryu sure would! |
Ruta: Do you sell laser bursts from the eyes for when I encounter creepy, leering old men on the subway?
Operator: 'Fraid not. Thanks for calling and for heaven's sakes, don't die.
---
Operator: Thank you for calling--
Ruta: I notice that as the puzzles start introducing new ideas and get more complex, there's a host of different ways to complete them. If I do it particularly well, can I get a bonus, like an extra life?
Operator: Thank you praising our in-depth personality monitoring system, where the puzzle solvers find solutions based on the way they think. You are free to work out a variety of different ways to complete each stage. We're especially proud that unlike other inter-dimensional apartment challenge complexes, our puzzles change based on how you think them through and what type of player you are. We reflect the diverse personalities of our customers--
 |
| This one requires a creative mind and excellent timing. Or does it? |
Ruta: Are you reading from a script?
Operator: At Better Living Through Puzzles, we believe in increasing reading comprehension, by using only English in our puzzles, even though our manufacturer is Japanese. Anyone can play! Reading is good for you!
Ruta: Can you just tell me whether I can get a life or something for doing well?
Operator: Don't try to get a life, do well with the one you have. That's our motto at Better Living Through Puzzles.
 |
| Victory is celebrated with "You won the battle RPG music," while defeat is lamented with "Your party was defeated RPG music. |
Ruta: Fine. Gotta go. If I don't complete these damn puzzles soon, the milk and yogurt I bought from the store is going to go bad.
---
Operator: Thank you for--
Ruta: Hello again. You know the music here is nice and catchy, but there's only two types, and it's so short and loops so much it kind of gets on my nerves.
Operator: I'm sorry, sir, I'm afraid that's all we've got.
Ruta: Well, put on the radio then. Some smooth jazz would be nice.
Operator: None of that, either.
Ruta: Not even a little saxophone playing by a balding, middle-aged man?
Operator: Not even a little. Goodbye and thank you for calling Better Living Through Puzzles.
---
 |
| Headaches, you will get! Lovely fun headaches! |
Operator: Hi, Ruta.
Ruta: How'd you know it was me this time?
Operator: Lucky guess!
Ruta: Okay. Well, here's the thing. These puzzles are getting bloody hard! There's warp tiles and directional arrows and crumbling blocks and frozen blocks and switches that raise blocks and blocks that change the direction of the directional arrows, how am I supposed to keep track of all the possibilities?
Operator: Use your prefrontal cortex!
Ruta: My what?
 |
| By this point the game is every bit as tricky as Lolo or Solomon's Key. |
Operator: Better Living Through Puzzles is designed to stop you from being a troglodyte and reduce procrastination by making you think several steps ahead. If you don't, you'll burn your bridges and die. We think this a healthy lesson to teach our children.
Ruta: Aren't I your resident?
Operator: Oh, child please. The sad fact is that more and more people are giving into the urges and demands of their limbic system, which is a buried in a primitive part of the brain and causes you to eat ice cream until you get dumped by your boyfriend instead of thinking toward your bright, sexy future in the Bahamas together! If only your prefrontal cortex had been stronger and you were able to think ahead several steps so you don't meet disaster and regret!
 |
| One of my favorite stages. Can you figure it out? |
Ruta: Where are your getting this?
Operator: You know that guy who designed the robot masters?
Ruta: Dr. Wily?
Operator: Yeah, he told us it would strengthen the prefrontal cortex.
Ruta: ...
Operator: Hello? Hello?
---
Rating: Three rutabagas out of an unmolested lamb.
Comes recommended. Does not include above story. In English too! Download it here, at Japanese software portal site, Vector. (For those who don't know Japanese, click here where it says Download Now in green.) Some other games by the same group can be found here.
If you need help navigating either of those Japanese sites, let me know in the comments! And don't forget to remind Crazy Fat Ethel to bring back my Fig Newtons!
11/24/2013
Don't Open the Box: Mama Mia, My Dear Korea!
 |
| Viva Korea! |
 | |||
| My lovely black mage badass, Medea! |
As my brothers and friends played through Super Mario USA, we'd say "Mama mia!" when we died. One time, I said, "Mama mia, poor Medea!" when I died as the princess, because you know, the princess was helping out like Medea did. It caught on.
One of my friends was a master at Super Mario USA. Her family had moved from Korea to work in Japan. She was my first Korean friend. We always left the hardest parts to her. It was in one of those levels where you have to be very careful how you bomb the rock walls to move on and in a dubious case of carelessness, she accidentally died. Cue, "Mama mia, poor Medea!" I thought I would be clever and add "From Korea" to the rhyme.
From that point on, the rhyme got longer and longer as we added more silly things to it. Anything we could think of that rhymed with "mia" got in. The chain got very long, but it always started with, "Mama mia!" and ended with, "Poor Medea!" At one point we added "Pizzeria" and of course if you eat something, what's the funniest food-related thing in the world to a nine-year-old? If you guessed poop, congratulations, you either understand children, are one yourself or are a child at heart -- all good things if you ask me! So the pizzeria chain evolved into "Pizzeria, poopa-pee-a, diarrhea!"
Now keep in mind we were just playing around, so we didn't really pay any particular attention to the order we were rhyming in. Here's what the finished monster looked like:
Mama mia
Two and three-a
It's a me-a
No, it's a she-a
Drives a Kia
From Korea
Pizzeria
Poopa pee-a
Diarrhea
Ants and bee-a
Gonna sting-ya
Poor Medea!
Harmless and fun, right? Well, not entirely. Unfortunately, our little rhyme was so catchy to us, we'd often sing it when not playing the game. My Korean friend sang it at home in front of her parents. I'm not sure how fluent they were in English, but all that stuck out to them was "Korea" and "poop."
We got in trouble. While my parents were understanding and tried to reason with her parents, I'm afraid I was never allowed to play with my Korean friend again. It was obvious to me and my brothers that we weren't trying to be mean to Koreans. My dad and mom simply warned me that no matter how innocent the intentions are, one should never put country names anywhere close to defecating terms. I did take the advice, of course and I've been lucky to make many other good Korean friends since then, but I can't help but think this when I look back on it:
Mama mia! Poor Medea!
11/21/2013
Mr. Fix It: How Random Battles and Lives Systems are Like Balding Remedies
Dear Sazanami,
My friend just recommended what he called a great RPG to me. But I starting playing it and to my horror, it has random battles!
I spent good money on this game! Why would my friend do that to me?
-Quaff, a Hairy Middle-Aged Accountant from Wisconsin
My dear Quaff,
I have a friend who has been blessed with a natural affinity toward beauty. Without any effort, he has maintained a nicely muscular frame, avoided any nasty kind of facial blemish and been endowed with lovely, floppy hair whose default state is permanent sexy. He doesn't use skin products, work out or constantly fuss with his hair.
As if dragged by some beauty inertia, his careless handsomeness has led him to become as vain as the sorceress from the Gummi Bears, Lady Bane. About a year ago, nearing the last futile bleats of his roaring twenties, my friend found his hair was starting to thin. This caused a sense of crisis in him until the day he saw a tip on variety show that advised people to stand on their head a little each day. Doing so would increase circulation to the head, which is needed for healthy hair growth, so goes the traditional wisdom.
At this point, I imagine many who read this can be dragged into two categories. You could be the curious, open-minded type who is sometimes easily fooled, "Oh, does that help stave off balding?" Or you could be the type who scoffs at such things as if they were irrational nonsense, "Scientists have found no direct link between such silly remedies and hair growth."
However, like usual, I think the truth is in the middle somewhere. It would appear that the prevailing fact is that once hair follicles stop growing -- not simply falling out, as from brushing or cancer treatment -- that's it, there's no getting them back. Until evidence comes saying otherwise, that's what I think is the truth. On the other hand, as somebody who was pulled into endless bathroom sessions to confirm that yes, my friend's hair did seem to be thinning at an alarming rate, with no discernible sickness or malady causing it, and seeing how he looks now, I can confirm that his hair definitely made a recovery. Apparently, the trick has worked for others as well.
That may down to what they and my friend did though. He's never been the type who can stand on his head, or do cartwheels, but every morning, after introducing an exercise regimen of various push-ups, pull-ups and the like, he spent some time against the wall teaching himself to stand on his head. Now, he has become quite an acrobatic guy who can walk on his head and do some impressive body-bending tricks.
He also started to take in more minerals, cut down on snacks and eat more fruits and vegetables. He learned to become more flexible and changed his sedentary lifestyle to something a little more athletic and healthy.
I think what happened is a combination of good living habits made his remaining hair much thicker and staved off any additional hair loss. He perhaps realized that nobody stays beautiful forever without at least a little effort. Either way, the change has made him a healthier person. He still doesn't use balding creams or spend hours in the bathroom, but indulges in good habits to maintain the pride in his natural beauty.
This could be called a healthy kind of vanity: a kind that inspires movement in a better direction and does not make the person seem like a massive piece of dick lint. So elements that have passed out of favor in video games, like random battles and lives systems, are at their best when they are inspired by a healthy kind of vanity. I bet you thought I would compare them to balding because such old video game ideas were once considered normal and natural, and have now faded away, didn't you? Gotcha!
No, no. The truth is that some people go bald and others keep their hair. (Some games still use old ideas for their mechanics, others adapt the new ones.) There is a third category of person though. They try endless remedies, like tonics or implants and such, to regrow their hair. (Some game designers throw in old elements without thinking much, in a misguided attempt to recapture the old days.) In this third category, there is still another person like my friend who practices healthy vanity. (They continue to carry on the tradition of the old games by thinking about the reasons why they started to fade and adopting healthier practices to prevent them falling out of favor.)
There are many unhealthy practices that went on with lives systems and random battles that led to some gamers thinking these ideas are now obsolete.
Because it was easy to design, older RPGs would repeatedly vomit out easy battles and with little care, attention or thought, one could mop up the chunky brown monster goo by taping down their A button. There weren't many engaging ideas in the battles, but that's not because they were random. Another complaint was that, like a wannabe rapper interrupted by his mom yelling to come to dinner, it interrupts the flow of the game and happened too frequently, which isn't so much a complaint leveled at the mechanic as it is due to sloppy game design or an incompatible taste between the developer's intentions and the player's wants.
Likewise, now that we can save our games to hard media independent from the game itself, the consensus seems to be that nobody wants to replay the same portion of the game. If a game isn't much fun anymore under the duress of repeated play, how good could it have really been? Even if it's a game where the appeal comes in experiencing the interactions, like any good story, it should inspire another go eventually (any parent who gets a nighttime request for the same book for weeks on end can tell you this). Everyone has their personal level to which they like to repeat an experience. Which would be healthier: insist that the only modern ideal of game design should be to keep the player going forward as much as possible, at all times, or that there is a spectrum of different preferences that can be catered to by knowing your audience?
Random battles, as a design element, still have a lot of value.
They can be a boon to developers with scarce resources. Inventing a system for encounters where battle initiate through contact with a visible object involves animating, programming and designing a whole host of symbols or enemies to populate the world and then designing environments so that players can avoid them, but are fostered into enough battles to keep the difficulty curve in the desirable area. Doing this incorrectly makes the whole thing cascade into the same kind of frustrations that poorly implemented random battles used to cause; players can still get caught into a series of battles that cause tedium and frustration because of AI routines, enemy or area designs. Developers who want to focus on character growth, intricate tactics or other mechanics; they can skip implementing symbol encounter battles and focus on the mathematical equations and ratios that are much easier to tweak and change.
Random battles also allow for interesting and fantastic contradictions. You can have a knight crawling in a series of narrow pipes and fighting witches and ogres. Some may say that ruins immersion, but many will also say they don't care about that, and like the strange gap, and rightly so for both parties. Random battles also help less coordinated players who do not like to have to contend with any action elements. They're also great for preserving surprise and tension.
Similarly, leaving the concept of lives and continues to drown with the Titanic would seriously hurt the design scope of surviving games. Many have noted that modern Mario games are so easy that "it makes the concept of lives meaningless." I wouldn't go that far. For one thing, I still encounter younger children or less skilled players who play Mario levels and can't get through a level without running out of all their lives. "Exactly! That's why there shouldn't be any lives. Just replays!" Not so fast.
Many games adopt a difficulty structure where the challenges grow more complex as the game continues. If a player is having trouble completing a certain stage, one reason might be that they have not learned or perfected skills in earlier stages that would help them. Designing a lives system that punishes the player by requiring a play-through of earlier stages can be a great strength of the design. Players may be reminded of other ways to play, might strengthen skills that could help with further portions and encounter situations that may provide hints or new insights to their current problem. In real life, is it reasonable to say anyone should just their charge their horns into their problems without taking a breather, looking at it from a different angle, telling the intern to do it instead, or going back to an earlier step? I think most would agree, it's often not healthy to do it this way.
There are many benefits of a lives system such as bragging rights, infinite 1-up tricks, rewards for exploration or skill, pithy comments about getting a life and easy numerical comparisons of how much more skilled one player is to another. Anyone who has played modern Mario games know also that it can also be fun just to stop and find ways to generate lives.
There are all sorts of other mechanics that have come under fire by using hyperbolic statements that call them archaic, like turn-based battle systems, save points or indeed, even things like boss battles and boss rushes. These well-trodden, traditional game mechanics are much like works of art whose perceived quality fluctuates based on the cultural values of the people who view them (also because plebes point at them and say, "I don't understand it, therefore it has no value.")
Let's keep them around by involving a healthy amount of skepticism toward sketchy ways bad designers implement them, letting them wax and wane like the hairline of a recurring chemotherapy patient, and by indulging in healthy vanity to keep the tradition alive.
Yours If You Want Me to Be,
Sazanami
My friend just recommended what he called a great RPG to me. But I starting playing it and to my horror, it has random battles!
I spent good money on this game! Why would my friend do that to me?
-Quaff, a Hairy Middle-Aged Accountant from Wisconsin
My dear Quaff,
I have a friend who has been blessed with a natural affinity toward beauty. Without any effort, he has maintained a nicely muscular frame, avoided any nasty kind of facial blemish and been endowed with lovely, floppy hair whose default state is permanent sexy. He doesn't use skin products, work out or constantly fuss with his hair.
As if dragged by some beauty inertia, his careless handsomeness has led him to become as vain as the sorceress from the Gummi Bears, Lady Bane. About a year ago, nearing the last futile bleats of his roaring twenties, my friend found his hair was starting to thin. This caused a sense of crisis in him until the day he saw a tip on variety show that advised people to stand on their head a little each day. Doing so would increase circulation to the head, which is needed for healthy hair growth, so goes the traditional wisdom.
At this point, I imagine many who read this can be dragged into two categories. You could be the curious, open-minded type who is sometimes easily fooled, "Oh, does that help stave off balding?" Or you could be the type who scoffs at such things as if they were irrational nonsense, "Scientists have found no direct link between such silly remedies and hair growth."
However, like usual, I think the truth is in the middle somewhere. It would appear that the prevailing fact is that once hair follicles stop growing -- not simply falling out, as from brushing or cancer treatment -- that's it, there's no getting them back. Until evidence comes saying otherwise, that's what I think is the truth. On the other hand, as somebody who was pulled into endless bathroom sessions to confirm that yes, my friend's hair did seem to be thinning at an alarming rate, with no discernible sickness or malady causing it, and seeing how he looks now, I can confirm that his hair definitely made a recovery. Apparently, the trick has worked for others as well.
That may down to what they and my friend did though. He's never been the type who can stand on his head, or do cartwheels, but every morning, after introducing an exercise regimen of various push-ups, pull-ups and the like, he spent some time against the wall teaching himself to stand on his head. Now, he has become quite an acrobatic guy who can walk on his head and do some impressive body-bending tricks.
 |
| My hair will be victorious against the ravaging of time! |
He also started to take in more minerals, cut down on snacks and eat more fruits and vegetables. He learned to become more flexible and changed his sedentary lifestyle to something a little more athletic and healthy.
I think what happened is a combination of good living habits made his remaining hair much thicker and staved off any additional hair loss. He perhaps realized that nobody stays beautiful forever without at least a little effort. Either way, the change has made him a healthier person. He still doesn't use balding creams or spend hours in the bathroom, but indulges in good habits to maintain the pride in his natural beauty.
This could be called a healthy kind of vanity: a kind that inspires movement in a better direction and does not make the person seem like a massive piece of dick lint. So elements that have passed out of favor in video games, like random battles and lives systems, are at their best when they are inspired by a healthy kind of vanity. I bet you thought I would compare them to balding because such old video game ideas were once considered normal and natural, and have now faded away, didn't you? Gotcha!
No, no. The truth is that some people go bald and others keep their hair. (Some games still use old ideas for their mechanics, others adapt the new ones.) There is a third category of person though. They try endless remedies, like tonics or implants and such, to regrow their hair. (Some game designers throw in old elements without thinking much, in a misguided attempt to recapture the old days.) In this third category, there is still another person like my friend who practices healthy vanity. (They continue to carry on the tradition of the old games by thinking about the reasons why they started to fade and adopting healthier practices to prevent them falling out of favor.)
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| There go the random battles of my youth. |
Because it was easy to design, older RPGs would repeatedly vomit out easy battles and with little care, attention or thought, one could mop up the chunky brown monster goo by taping down their A button. There weren't many engaging ideas in the battles, but that's not because they were random. Another complaint was that, like a wannabe rapper interrupted by his mom yelling to come to dinner, it interrupts the flow of the game and happened too frequently, which isn't so much a complaint leveled at the mechanic as it is due to sloppy game design or an incompatible taste between the developer's intentions and the player's wants.
Likewise, now that we can save our games to hard media independent from the game itself, the consensus seems to be that nobody wants to replay the same portion of the game. If a game isn't much fun anymore under the duress of repeated play, how good could it have really been? Even if it's a game where the appeal comes in experiencing the interactions, like any good story, it should inspire another go eventually (any parent who gets a nighttime request for the same book for weeks on end can tell you this). Everyone has their personal level to which they like to repeat an experience. Which would be healthier: insist that the only modern ideal of game design should be to keep the player going forward as much as possible, at all times, or that there is a spectrum of different preferences that can be catered to by knowing your audience?
Random battles, as a design element, still have a lot of value.
They can be a boon to developers with scarce resources. Inventing a system for encounters where battle initiate through contact with a visible object involves animating, programming and designing a whole host of symbols or enemies to populate the world and then designing environments so that players can avoid them, but are fostered into enough battles to keep the difficulty curve in the desirable area. Doing this incorrectly makes the whole thing cascade into the same kind of frustrations that poorly implemented random battles used to cause; players can still get caught into a series of battles that cause tedium and frustration because of AI routines, enemy or area designs. Developers who want to focus on character growth, intricate tactics or other mechanics; they can skip implementing symbol encounter battles and focus on the mathematical equations and ratios that are much easier to tweak and change.
Random battles also allow for interesting and fantastic contradictions. You can have a knight crawling in a series of narrow pipes and fighting witches and ogres. Some may say that ruins immersion, but many will also say they don't care about that, and like the strange gap, and rightly so for both parties. Random battles also help less coordinated players who do not like to have to contend with any action elements. They're also great for preserving surprise and tension.
Similarly, leaving the concept of lives and continues to drown with the Titanic would seriously hurt the design scope of surviving games. Many have noted that modern Mario games are so easy that "it makes the concept of lives meaningless." I wouldn't go that far. For one thing, I still encounter younger children or less skilled players who play Mario levels and can't get through a level without running out of all their lives. "Exactly! That's why there shouldn't be any lives. Just replays!" Not so fast.
Many games adopt a difficulty structure where the challenges grow more complex as the game continues. If a player is having trouble completing a certain stage, one reason might be that they have not learned or perfected skills in earlier stages that would help them. Designing a lives system that punishes the player by requiring a play-through of earlier stages can be a great strength of the design. Players may be reminded of other ways to play, might strengthen skills that could help with further portions and encounter situations that may provide hints or new insights to their current problem. In real life, is it reasonable to say anyone should just their charge their horns into their problems without taking a breather, looking at it from a different angle, telling the intern to do it instead, or going back to an earlier step? I think most would agree, it's often not healthy to do it this way.
There are many benefits of a lives system such as bragging rights, infinite 1-up tricks, rewards for exploration or skill, pithy comments about getting a life and easy numerical comparisons of how much more skilled one player is to another. Anyone who has played modern Mario games know also that it can also be fun just to stop and find ways to generate lives.
There are all sorts of other mechanics that have come under fire by using hyperbolic statements that call them archaic, like turn-based battle systems, save points or indeed, even things like boss battles and boss rushes. These well-trodden, traditional game mechanics are much like works of art whose perceived quality fluctuates based on the cultural values of the people who view them (also because plebes point at them and say, "I don't understand it, therefore it has no value.")
Let's keep them around by involving a healthy amount of skepticism toward sketchy ways bad designers implement them, letting them wax and wane like the hairline of a recurring chemotherapy patient, and by indulging in healthy vanity to keep the tradition alive.
Yours If You Want Me to Be,
Sazanami
11/19/2013
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.
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| A violent hikikomori |
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?
11/18/2013
Japanese Lessons: Your Entire Life on Video
In my my article on the creepy TV show episode, Your Story, the title of the TV show presents a couple of talking points to help Japanese learners become more fluent and deepen their understanding. So let's get right into them. Remember! It's much easier to read these articles, and they won't display gooble-de-gook if you're doing so on a device that can read Japanese characters.
First of all, let's look at the title of the TV show, 世にも奇妙な物語, which reads Yo ni mo Kimyo na Monogatari. The yo (世) is commonly read this way when it is alone, though I think a lot of foreign speakers I've spoken to are used to seeing it read as se in sekai (世界). Both yo and sekai mean world, but yo has a less literal and more figurative meaning. You'll see the word used in more factual and formal circumstances such as the World Bank, sekai ginkou (世界銀行), the concept of world peace, sekai heiwa (世界平和), or the actual designation of a world. In many video games, the dark world is yami no sekai (闇の世界) and the light world, hikari no sekai (光の世界).
Yo (世）is a much older term and more poetic. It stands for society, the perceived world, the human idea of what a world is. If you want to say "That's just the way it is!" in Japanese, you'd probably say something like, "Yo no naka wa sonna mon da!" (「世の中はそんなもんだ！」). Here, yo no naka (世の中), means the everyday world we're accustomed to live in. Paintings of the floating world were known as ukiyo-e (浮世絵), a study of the opinions in a society is known as a yoronchousa (世論調査) and the expression in the title of this show yo ni mo (世にも) is a saying that emphasizes that the thing that comes after the "mo" is something so extreme it could hardly be thought to be part of this world.
One of the most famous usages of the yo ni mo expression is yo ni mo fushigi na mono (世にも不思議なもの). This means something close a thing or idea that is "out of this world mysterious."
Now that you have a better idea of what the title is saying when it uses yo ni mo (世にも), next comes kimyou (奇妙), which means bizarre, strange, unlikely, weird or peculiar. The title uses kimyou (奇妙) instead of fushigi (不思議), perhaps because the ki (奇) in that word can take part in words that mean anything from a miracle (kiseki, 奇跡), to novel, as in new and interesting (kibatsu, 奇抜) to rare and marvelous talent (kisai 奇才).
Meanwhile, myou (妙) can often be used by itself to describe that is odd and out of place. If you got up from your desk and noticed that your cup wasn't where you left it last, you might say myou da na (妙だな), meaning, "Well, that's a little off/odd/strange."
Put them together and you have a perfect to describe the many arresting, novel stories of people beset with odd situations and strange, miraculous powers.
The last part of the title is monogatari (物語) part. You might notice the title is written na monogatari (な物語), but the oft-used expression is written na mono (なもの. Well beside the na character being there to designate a noun after an adjective, there isn't much of one. The title could be written in hiragana characters and still be the same. The mono (もの) used is the same meaning as the one used in monogatari (物語). That mono is hard to explain. Mono are things that are true about life, on a deep and irrefutable level. They are also physical things, like lamps and paper. Sometimes mono can also be living things, but in this case, it isn't. Mono are different from koto (こと/事), which is an incident. So for instance, if the name was yo ni mo kimyou na jiken (世にも奇妙な事件), which is jiken but contains the character and meaning of koto (事), then it would be about strange and peculiar instances. But because it uses mono, these are stories, in other words, by the Japanese way of reckoning, a telling of the way things are on their most basic and true levels. Katari (語り) is just that, using words to tell about something. It just loses the ri (り) character in writing and becomes gatari after mono for grammar reasons too tedious to expound upon now.
So if you put it all together, it's a novel truth about life and society told in such a way that it is too strange to be believed as part of this world.
Now you see why some people (like me) get headaches from trying to translate Japanese into English properly!
First of all, let's look at the title of the TV show, 世にも奇妙な物語, which reads Yo ni mo Kimyo na Monogatari. The yo (世) is commonly read this way when it is alone, though I think a lot of foreign speakers I've spoken to are used to seeing it read as se in sekai (世界). Both yo and sekai mean world, but yo has a less literal and more figurative meaning. You'll see the word used in more factual and formal circumstances such as the World Bank, sekai ginkou (世界銀行), the concept of world peace, sekai heiwa (世界平和), or the actual designation of a world. In many video games, the dark world is yami no sekai (闇の世界) and the light world, hikari no sekai (光の世界).
Yo (世）is a much older term and more poetic. It stands for society, the perceived world, the human idea of what a world is. If you want to say "That's just the way it is!" in Japanese, you'd probably say something like, "Yo no naka wa sonna mon da!" (「世の中はそんなもんだ！」). Here, yo no naka (世の中), means the everyday world we're accustomed to live in. Paintings of the floating world were known as ukiyo-e (浮世絵), a study of the opinions in a society is known as a yoronchousa (世論調査) and the expression in the title of this show yo ni mo (世にも) is a saying that emphasizes that the thing that comes after the "mo" is something so extreme it could hardly be thought to be part of this world.
One of the most famous usages of the yo ni mo expression is yo ni mo fushigi na mono (世にも不思議なもの). This means something close a thing or idea that is "out of this world mysterious."
Now that you have a better idea of what the title is saying when it uses yo ni mo (世にも), next comes kimyou (奇妙), which means bizarre, strange, unlikely, weird or peculiar. The title uses kimyou (奇妙) instead of fushigi (不思議), perhaps because the ki (奇) in that word can take part in words that mean anything from a miracle (kiseki, 奇跡), to novel, as in new and interesting (kibatsu, 奇抜) to rare and marvelous talent (kisai 奇才).
Meanwhile, myou (妙) can often be used by itself to describe that is odd and out of place. If you got up from your desk and noticed that your cup wasn't where you left it last, you might say myou da na (妙だな), meaning, "Well, that's a little off/odd/strange."
Put them together and you have a perfect to describe the many arresting, novel stories of people beset with odd situations and strange, miraculous powers.
The last part of the title is monogatari (物語) part. You might notice the title is written na monogatari (な物語), but the oft-used expression is written na mono (なもの. Well beside the na character being there to designate a noun after an adjective, there isn't much of one. The title could be written in hiragana characters and still be the same. The mono (もの) used is the same meaning as the one used in monogatari (物語). That mono is hard to explain. Mono are things that are true about life, on a deep and irrefutable level. They are also physical things, like lamps and paper. Sometimes mono can also be living things, but in this case, it isn't. Mono are different from koto (こと/事), which is an incident. So for instance, if the name was yo ni mo kimyou na jiken (世にも奇妙な事件), which is jiken but contains the character and meaning of koto (事), then it would be about strange and peculiar instances. But because it uses mono, these are stories, in other words, by the Japanese way of reckoning, a telling of the way things are on their most basic and true levels. Katari (語り) is just that, using words to tell about something. It just loses the ri (り) character in writing and becomes gatari after mono for grammar reasons too tedious to expound upon now.
So if you put it all together, it's a novel truth about life and society told in such a way that it is too strange to be believed as part of this world.
Now you see why some people (like me) get headaches from trying to translate Japanese into English properly!
11/17/2013
Mystery is Everywhere: Your Entire Life on Video
Mystery is everywhere. It lies behind a waterfall, inside an ornate locked box, or in the school's meat. Mystery improves games. Without it, magic isn't magical. The horizon doesn't beckon without mystery's enticing finger. Mystery lies at the heart of games, because it's always the most enticing question: what happens next?
If I were a game and I were looking for inspiration, I might look at one episode of Japanase television short story seriesYo ni Mo Kimyo na Monogatari ; perhaps a good translation might be Strange Stories for a Stranger World or There Are Pecular Stories Out There.
This tale starts with a woman browsing through a video rental store. Nothing looks enticing until she notices a series of white videos entitled Your Story (Anata no Monogatari), which is also the title of the episode.
Mami, our main character remembers a conversation she overheard in the train between two school girls. A series of tapes in white with nothing but the words "Your Story" printed on them can sometimes be found in video stores. According to the girls, the person who watches the video will see their entire life from the day they are born to the day they die.
Intrigued, Mami rents the first video and returns home with it. After putting it in, Mami is disappointed to learn there's nothing on the video. She leaves it running and gets up to make a cuppa.
While Mami is in the kitchen, she suddenly hears a baby crying. She returns to find herself being born on the television screen. Though her parents never filmed her birth (she says there were only photographs), in vivid detail, there lies her first few years after coming into this world. Intrigued, Mami rents more videos and relives her life.
The contrast in these scenes is intriguing. We, as the viewer, know that this can't lead to a good place. (This episode was filmed after the success of The Ring made electronic media devices a thing of terror and besides, anyone who has encountered stories like these know they don't usually end well.) However, Mami is thrilled. Her life is depicted as so bland and ordinary that any kind of spirit and enthusiasm has been filtered away like mediocre coffee. It's only the scenes where she encounters her old life with her 5-years-dead father that the screen shows a real and vivid vibrancy.
Eventually, Mami runs into a tape that shows her walking around in a video store, renting the same tape she is watching and even shows footage of her watching it. It is at this point that I, and I think many others, would so creeped out we might need to excrete the excess creepiness out our butts. But Mami runs into a problem in real life. Invited out for lunch at her workplace, and bristling with curiosity, she wants to know what will happen tomorrow. So she watches the first tape to show the future.
It is at this point that I will not reveal what happens next. It's a lot more clever than you might think. Suffice to say that Mami finds out something that has us questioning the nature of how we perceive the future. No, it's not that. And no, not that either. Oh God no, heavens no, it isn't that hackneyed old thing either.
I especially like this scene:
If I were a game and I were looking for inspiration, I might look at one episode of Japanase television short story seriesYo ni Mo Kimyo na Monogatari ; perhaps a good translation might be Strange Stories for a Stranger World or There Are Pecular Stories Out There.
This tale starts with a woman browsing through a video rental store. Nothing looks enticing until she notices a series of white videos entitled Your Story (Anata no Monogatari), which is also the title of the episode.
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| Existential worries in the video store of life. |
Intrigued, Mami rents the first video and returns home with it. After putting it in, Mami is disappointed to learn there's nothing on the video. She leaves it running and gets up to make a cuppa.
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| "Hello there Mami, I've been waiting for you." |
The contrast in these scenes is intriguing. We, as the viewer, know that this can't lead to a good place. (This episode was filmed after the success of The Ring made electronic media devices a thing of terror and besides, anyone who has encountered stories like these know they don't usually end well.) However, Mami is thrilled. Her life is depicted as so bland and ordinary that any kind of spirit and enthusiasm has been filtered away like mediocre coffee. It's only the scenes where she encounters her old life with her 5-years-dead father that the screen shows a real and vivid vibrancy.
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| Hello, TV snow, my old friend. |
It is at this point that I will not reveal what happens next. It's a lot more clever than you might think. Suffice to say that Mami finds out something that has us questioning the nature of how we perceive the future. No, it's not that. And no, not that either. Oh God no, heavens no, it isn't that hackneyed old thing either.
I especially like this scene:
 | ||
| I pissed in your tea, Mami. |
Mami is watching her future self, who knows she is being watched by whatever entity films the tapes. She turns around and stares into the camera of her mysterious filmer. Future Mami stares right back at Past Mami, knowing she is watching herself, knowing what will happen next, in a look of utter hopelessness.
So why is Your Story successful at using mystery? One reason is because what Mami does isn't very mysterious. Every step of the way, from beginning to end, we know why Mami does what she does and what motivates her. The story is crystal clear here.
It's everything that surrounds Mami that is murkier. Where did the tapes come from? Who is filming them? How does this whole mechanism work? Did she really see the tapes as they were or was she just renting regular shows and hallucinating? Was what she saw the truth or did she misunderstand something? Would her life have been better if she -- oops, can't tell you that.
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| The actress here is Manami Konishi, known for her work in movies and television dramas as a charming, relate-able character actor. |
Consider the following three scenarios and ask yourself, "Which do I find the most mysterious?"
a. A girl is walking through the forest. She can hear the sounds of a baby crying and no matter were she goes or looks, the sound doesn't fade, become more faint or louder. Eventually, she ignores the sound, picks some berries and goes out of the woods.
b. A girl is walking through the forest because she needs to pick some berries for a medicine that will help her mother. She can't find the berries and is about give up, when suddenly she hears the sounds of a baby crying. Distressed and concerned, she searches everywhere for the source, but the sounds don't change no matter where shes goes. It still sounds as far away and as close as when she first heard it. Eventually, she runs into the berries she is searching for. Having no time left and knowing her mother is sick, she decides to ignore the baby and go home.
c. A girl is walking through the forest. Her mother is pregnant and she needs berries to cure her ailing stomach. She has heard stories that in this forest, babies are thrown away by mothers who did not want them. She is picking the berries when suddenly she hears the sound of a baby crying. In distress, she tries to find the helpless baby, but no matter where she runs the sound of the baby's cries are just as loud and far away as when she just heard them. It doesn't seem to be getting any closer or farther away. At a loss, the girl rushes home. When she enters her home, suddenly the baby's crying becomes unbearably loud and she drops the berries. After scolding the girl, her sister prepares the berries in the stewing medicine for her sick mother. Meanwhile, the girl is writhing on the floor in pain from the sound of the screaming baby. Suddenly, the screaming stops. Looking up, the girl sees the remnant of the medicine dripping from her mother's mouth like blood.
Many people, I think, would prefer the last one, C. A is probably too vague. We don't know the motivation of the character, why they're in the forest and what is going on at all. Many mysterious stories are just incoherent. They try for mystery by referring to creepy ideas, but there isn't anything else to latch onto and it feels like the authors just omitted details to make it mysterious. With B, we have some idea, but I think a lot of people prefer the creepy details of C. The suggestion that the medicine will kill the baby in the pregnant mother is suitably macabre.
However, I think the best and most mysterious would be somewhere between B and C. If you ask me, the extremely overt suggestion that the berries aren't good for the baby isn't a mystery so much as it is an answer.
Your Story reaches this magical median between the two. What happens is not a mystery. Why it happens and what the story is suggesting is extremely mysterious. There are any number of interpretations I think could be valid and they suggest any number of things. One of the strangest things about this story is what it suggests about its own nature. Your Story subverts the traditional idea that a character can change the future positively by becoming proactive and suggests something entirely different.
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| The final shot of the piece. |
Your Story has a lot of other excellent virtues, such as an economy of style that does a world of good for its storytelling and a confident sense of time and place -- even though rental video stores still exist in Japan, elsewhere they are becoming a thing of the past. I watched this for the first time 8 years after it was filmed. Imagine the story 40 years from now to a young boy or girl who has never even heard of the concept of renting videos from a store, let alone VHS! The tapes in this story might be as arcane and mysterious as crystal balls or tarot cards.
Your Story understands that in order to leave an indelible impression in people's minds, the art of the careful direction cannot be underestimated.
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