Bad Breath Computer Death

Sorry kids, been meaning to write but my computer's HDD is fried. Big sobs (T_T)

I'm running on a backup which barely works so I won't be up to full speed for a while. Still, this means I can upgrade soon! Made a promise to the wife to wait till the next Mac models come out, which according to macrumors.com, should be anytime now. Hurry up Steve Jobs and get those new Mac Pros out the door ya bastard!!!!!

Koropokkur

Hello, this preview of Harvest Moon and what went into it (see post titled Korobokkuru) inspired me to test my translating chops on this Japanese Wikipedia article about the legendary Koropokkur. Its link to video gaming is pretty tenuous. This was just an opportunity to practice my Japanese and test out some free blogging software I found. Hence you'll find links to stuff everywhere because they're so easy to do(^_^). I have lots of other stuff to write about of a gamey flavour (Mmm-mm, EDF toffee delight!) and a Japanesey flavour (used panties, cigarettes and beer flavour apparently!) in the next few days, so come back soon! Oh, I added some links into the translation that weren't in the original Japanese for peeps who want to know more. Unfortunately some of the links to Japanese sites may not work. The addresses are correct, but when I clicked on them to check if they worked I got redirected to my 1UP page. With my limited HTML skills, I can't explain why... hope they work for you. I was unable to verify a few of the Japanese names. They are the ones without links.

Well, to the adventurous, read on, to those with an IQ of 80 and below, turn back now, you're gonna crash!

Koropokkur

Koropokkur are little people that appear in Ainu legends. The name in Ainu is generally understood to mean "The people under the butterbur leaves." P and b sounds are not differentiated in Ainu, hence they are also known as Korobokkur. Ainu legends of these little people are widely known in places such as Hokkaido, Minamichishima, and Karafuto. As well as Koropokkur/Korobokkur, there are also instances where they are called Tichiseunkur, Tichisekocchakamui and Tonchi (which all mean "Pit dwellers").

Legends

While Ainu legends of these little people are widely known in places such as Hokkaido, Minamichishima, and Karafuto, there are variations depending on the region. The following story is mostly the same in each version.

Before the Ainu started living on this land there was a race known as the Koropokkur living here. Small in stature, fleet of foot, they were skillful fishermen who lived in pits with roofs made from butterbur leaves.
They were benevolent and friendly with the Ainu, giving them game such as deer and fish and trading items with them. But they never wanted to show themselves and so they traded by leaving things at night in places such as windows.
One day, a young Ainu tried to see a Koropokkur by lying in wait for the little people to actually leave some gifts. Whilst a Koropokkur was leaving some gifts, the young Ainu grabbed the Koropokkur's hand and pulled it indoors. The young Ainu had pulled in what appeared to be a beautiful lady with tattoos on the back of her hands (It is said that Ainu wives having tattoos comes from this incident).
The Koropokkur went into a rage over the young Ainu's insolence, so from that day on, the Koropokkur were never seen by the Ainu ever again. To this day, there are still pits in many places and if you dig, stone implements and earthenware which are traces of them once living on this land.

Depending on the region, there are variations in the mythology such as; "The Koropokkur were a lazy people that the Ainu gave food to," or, "The Ainu custom of tattooing originally came from worrying that the Koropokkur would take back the land the Ainu had taken from them, so they put tattoos on the Koropokkur's hands."

(If you're wondering, "Wha? How does tattooing the little buggers help?" You've got me. This makes no sense to me or my wife (who's Japanese). She has a strong suspicion that this part of the Wiki was not written by a native Japanese, hence my having a hard time trying to make sense of it!)

The Koropokkur Debate

In 1886, Shozaburo Watase wrote in the inaugural issue of Anthropological Society Report that the ruins of pit dwellings that could be seen in the Sapporo area were made by the Koropokkur and that this was proof that the Koropokkur had been living there before the Ainu. Later, Shogoro Tsuboi wrote in issue 9 of Anthropological Society Report that he mostly agreed with Shozaburo Watase. However, Kotaro Shirai, in the same issue published his opposing theory anonymously. Yoshikiyo Koganei, Kosaku Hamada, Denzo Sato, Ryuuzou Torii, Sadakichi Kita and many other researchers got involved in the argument. Ultimately the debate continued until 1913, when Tsuboi died in St. Petersburg, Russia and the theory that the Koropokkur really existed went into decline.
However, the debate not only changed the course of Ainu research by popularising the theory that the Ainu are the indigenous people of northern Japan (The Ainu theory) over the theory that they are not (The pre-Ainu theory), but also widely caused great leaps forward in Japanese anthropology, folk studies and archaeology.

Koropokkur-Themed Works

In 1959, Satoru Sato had a novel about the Koropokkur published called The Little Country Nobody Knows which formed the currently accepted view of the Koropokkur. This book became part of the Korobokkur Tales series. Sequels included The Dog As Small As A Bean, The Little Person Who Fell From The Stars, The Boy With The Strange Eyes and More Tales From The Little Country.

These books were turned into an anime series called Korobokkur Adventures in 1973.

In The Little Country Nobody Knows, Satoru Sato has his main character say that perhaps the Koropokkur and Sukunabikonanomikoto are of the same race.

The Koropokkur also appear in the Bokujo Monogatari (Harvest Moon) video game series to help with farming chores and give advice to the main character.

Play some Sphinx, dammit!

Helloooo...

So, from one fairly unknown game to another - Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy.



I finished it just over a week ago. I was going to finish Gears of War, but, meh. Yeah, sorry, I'm the one person who doesn't think Gears of War is the mutt's nuts. So sue me. Or yosumi! That one's just for therealpidge, if you're reading (^_^)

I was going to play Blue Dragon or Earth Defence Force 3 for 360, but they'd both disappeared from my local 2nd hand game shop! So much for getting them cheap, I thought.

So, Sphinx. I bought Sphinx a couple of years back when my wife and I went to Tokyo and I found some import games in Akihabara. That must seem weird to people not in Japan, importing Western games! I played Sphinx a little at the time I bought it, but bigger games came along that left Sphinx to get dusty. It was on Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox. I got the Xbox version and I decided to play it on my 360 this time, just to see how robust the backwards compatibility emulator is. It plays like it should, nice 'n' smooth, although the attract sequence video (not the sound, strangely) is stuttery and it froze on the title screen once. Otherwise, it plays great, in fact I'm wondering if the emu isn't enhancing the graphics a bit. I remember it looked - surprisingly for such a little known game - rather good on Xbox when I tried it out 2 years ago. I just tried out it out on original flavour Xbox again and it's still good, but I think the 360 rezzes the graphics up (ooh, how technical!). The textures are really detailed, the landscapes and SFX are beautiful and dramatic, bursting with rich colours.







The 360 really brings the colours and textures out, so play it on 360 rather than an old gen system if you can. It's pretty sad when a 4 year old game looks better than Phantasy Star Universe on 360. Man alive that was a lazy PS2 port... *sigh* Suffice to say, this game looks pretty damn good, especially when you consider its age. The developers weren't even at the "We've squeezed everything out the machine because we're at the end of its life cycle" stage!

Like Kya Dark Lineage (see my last blog entry), this is a game that isn't perfect, but deserves to be better recognised. It's a sort of Diet Zelda. The game switches between the titular 2 characters. The meat of the game belongs to Sphinx and his Zelda-like sections, with interludes starring Tutankahmen, who has been turned into a mummy. These bits are just explore and puzzle sections. These sections are interesting because seeing as you are a mummy, you can't die as you're already (un)dead! If you fail or (literally) fall, you just reappear at a checkpoint. The Mummy's bits actually play on this immortality. Many of the puzzles revolve around burning, electrifying or flattening The Mummy and using the Mummy in that state somewhere else.



I like how the music changes depending on what state The Mummy is in, especially the light swing jazz music (think of the music in the movie The Mask) when The Mummy runs around on fire.

There's one bit that's much more frustrating than the rest of the game where you have to get past these mechanical eyes. If they see you, doors close. To get by them, you can go invisible, but only when you stand still. Not only is the timing hard as the eyes swing to and fro, but I swear I've been caught lots of times just because the fucker wouldn't cloak when I told him to! Much swearing and scaring my wife was involved at that point. I probably got a few ulcers from that. Phew.

Sphinx's bits are fairly good, nothing to spooge over (except those beautiful fantasy Egyptian landscapes and colourful skies!), but they're OK. There are towns, people to meet and do things for, places to go, places you can't go yet because you don't have the correct doodad - it's Zelda, just not quite as well developed - but then I don't think Eurocom has Nintendo's clout to make a proper Zelda. The only game that I've played that's given Zelda a run for its money is Okami. Combat certainly pails in comparison to Zelda. It's not crap, but there's no lock on, and the shield isn't as responsive, so I rarely used it. There are less attacks, too, although this game is more about puzzles than combat. You do seem to collect a lot of things that only get used once, which is a shame. The camera gets stuck in places, but less than Kya Dark Lineage.

Sphinx doesn't have much of a character. He has no lines in cutscenes nor does he emote all that much.


This is as about as much emotion as you'll get out of How-do-I-poop-when-I've-got-a-tail-where-my-bum-should-be Sphinx.

The Mummy is a better character. I particularly like when he winks and says, "Hey!" at the camera (^_^).



Speaking of, er... speaking, this game is crying out for a little cartoony voice acting. For all the graphical splendour and fairly atmospheric music this game brings, it's quite jarring that all the dialogue is text only. Maybe the devco forgot to hire voice actors...?

The developers, Eurocom, must have cared a lot about the game considering the effort they put into creating this fantasy Egyptian world. It seems like they thought the characters had legs enough for a series, because once you beat the fairly easy final boss, you get an ending that, while not a big cliffhanger, doesn't resolve everything, either. It's quite an annoying ending because it's quite short and one character does something that I think is meant to be a joke but just ends up making you feel that part of the game story was a waste of time. I'm trying hard not to write any spoilers, but... well, you'll know when you see it. Anyway, despite its faults, it is a satisfying game and I certainly would be happy to hear that an improved sequel is in the works. Unfortunately no one talks about Sphinx these days. If you're looking for a decent game in between those big A-listers like God of War 2 and ooh, Mass Effect, I recommend Sphinx, you might be pleasantly surprised!





I don't wanna know what's going on in this pic, but it sure looks rude! (>_<);

A slightly retro look at Kya Dark Lineage

Well, hey there fellow nerfherders, and welcome to my 2nd blog entry.

Anyone see that "Yo Soy Kratos" video on Gamevideos.com? What the hell is that dude saying? Anyone? (^_^;

So a few weeks ago I finished a little known platformer/3D exploration game for PS2 called Kya: Dark Lineage. It came out 2 or 3 years ago.

Kya is a game that isn't perfect, but deserves to be better recognised. 1UP's own Retronauts overlord Jeremy Parish made a throwaway criticism about Kya in his Death of Game Mascots podcast a while back, which slightly irked me, because I was enjoying the game immensely at the time.

So what is Kya: Dark Lineage? Take Jak and Daxter 1's platforming. Mix in Super Monkey Ball's vertigo-inducing stages. What happens? You get a sprawling connected 3D world with stages floating in the sky that'll cause heart attacks in agrophobics. (^_^)

Kya is a teenage girl from Earth, but she falls into another world with her half brother where the good natives are known as - and this is the clever part - Nativs. (^_^). The Nativs have been turned into enemy Wolfen(stein?). You have to beat the Wolfen up till they're unconscious and exorcise the Wolfen curses from them. The more you exorcise, the more shops with juicy new upgrades get built in their home village. So not only is it fun to "collect" Nativs, it actually helps you in the game.

There are two really cool things about this game.
It is a great example of how to use your story/world's themes to influence the gameplay. The main theme of Kya is air/wind. Seeing as the whole world Kya finds herself in floats high above the clouds, wind blows all over the place, and you often have to master its currents to get from A to B.



Depth of field is another theme. The draw distance is incredible for a PS2 game. Like Jak and Daxter 1, the stages are connected (but with fairly well-disguised loading time wind tunnels/Stargate tunnels) to form one world, and each stage is Big Jeff Mahoolah huge. You can, for example, get to the top of an island and look down around you at the rest of the stage, even zooming in with added detail if you have the telescope. Sometimes you can even dive off to those far areas! There are bits where you actually have to freefall down huge shafts for minutes at a time avoiding obstructing crud, too, which are good fun.

The other cool thing is this game's McGuffin for collecting. Normally in these kinds of games, there's some shit you have to collect a billion of in order to get a bonus (I'm looking at you, DK64), and Kya is no exception - but with a twist. The collectible is actually your enemy, the Wolfen, who you have to render unconscious then break their curses to release the good Nativs within.
You have to sometimes be pretty cunning at exorcising the Wolfen. They are often placed in precarious or hard to reach positions, and figuring out how to knock them out without Kya dying or knocking the Wolfen into the void below is what makes the combat enjoyable. Sure, you can miss them out (oh yeah, this game is very non-linear, which is very cool), or knock them off the island into the clouds below, but that doesn't help you much in the end, because they'll just respawn when you die or leave the area. So exorcising them means they'll be permanently removed from that area! Bonus!
Stealth plays an important part so you can reach many of the enemies.



There's a lot of satisfaction when you get the drop on them and beat them to a pulp with Kya's acrobatic capoeira punches and kicks, especially the bigger Wolfen.

Strangely for this sort of game, the heroine has a lot of beat 'em up moves that you have to string into combos to effectively take on the Wolfen. While the platforming engine reminds me a lot of Jak 1, the combat makes me think of The Mark of Kri.



Enemies gang up around Kya and you have to do some fairly difficult joypad gymnastics to bust out the better moves, just like Kri. But it doesn't have Kri's right analogue stick targetting. Ah yes, targetting, one of Kya's weak points. There's no way to lock onto enemies, so your punches sometimes miss. But any competent gamer can deal with it - I did, and I'm hardly the world's best gamer.

Many call out the camera in this game, and with good reason. The camera sucks in places, as does the storyline, but the worlds (and thanks to the decent art style, they really do feel like different worlds) are great. The camera is fine most of the time, and it certainly doesn't break the game.

Rather than the camera, the worst part of the game is its annoying difficulty spikes, which are mainly on the landboarding/halfpipe sections. There's a few times where you have to slide down looooooong stretches of land avoiding obstacles and gaps to get to the end.



Some are fantastic to watch - you're being chased by lava down a canyon or up a tower in the final part of the game. They're a real pain to beat, though, compared to the rest of the game. Most of the stages have plenty of checkpoints, but the later boarding sections require the player to pull off a lot of difficult manoeuvres in sequence to get to the end, which can be very frustrating when you flub up just once and drown (and burn!) in lava. The varying difficulty is particularly noticable at the end with an extremely difficult tower climb/spiral shaped board section and a sneeze-and-he'll-keel-over-dead final boss.

Overall a very fun game, I'm glad to have had the chance to play it, but misjudged difficulty spikes and a shitty short cliffhanger ending. Ugh. I hate cliffhanger endings to games you know will never get a sequel... 'sup Advent Rising?

Anyone out there have any annoying cliffhanger endings that you know will ever get resolved?

My First Blog

That sounds so Fisher Price, doesn't it?

Hi, my name's Carl, and this is my first ever blog. Way to come late to the party, huh? I guess I never really felt a need to be published - until now!

Well, let's give this blog thing a whirl.

I'm 30 years old and from England but I've lived in Japan (Fukuoka area) for the last 8 years or so. My Japanese isn't perfect, but it's good enough to fool some Japanese on the phone and online into thinking I'm one of "The Natives"! (^_^) I'm married to a closet gamer. Well, toilet gamer. (^_^; My wife gets a lot of game time on DS Tetris, Zookeeper, Brain Age, those sorts of games. But you won't catch her playing Biohazard 4 (I hate the name Resident Evil - sounds like Evil is a guest in a hotel!) or Earth Defence Force 3 like I do.

I've been playing games ever since my Dad bought a BBC "B" Micro back in the early '80s. I have a lot of memories of typing in program listings for arcade game clones into that computer. I've had and still have a lot of old gaming systems since then including the Sega Megadrive, Saturn, PS1, PS2, PC Engine and loads more. I mostly play PS2 and Xbox 360 stuff nowadays.

My favourite games include:

Sonic the Hedgehog 1-3 and Sonic CD,
The Legend of Zelda series,
Biohazard,
Playing 2P co op Earth Defence Force 1 and 2 with my good friend Evan (come back to Japan and let's team up on the 3rd game!),
Wipeout,
Ridge Racer,
Eternal Darkness,
Chrono Cross (sorry Trigger fans - I prefer Cross over Trigger!),
Most of the Final Fantasy games.
Ooh, God of War and Halo as well!

Not Halo 2 with its disappointing storyline - ptooie!

I'm not really sure what exactly I'll be writing about, but obviously there'll be games galore, especially ones that don't get covered so much by the press - I played a couple I liked recently; Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy and Kya - Dark Legacy.





Like Milky on the 1UP Editors' Blogs, I'll probably rant about stuff that has nothing to do with games, such as being a foreigner in Japan. Much as I love it here and wouldn't swap it for going back to live in England, there's a whole lot of weirdness and "Huh? Why are things like this?" in Japan. Look forward to it!

That's it for today;

Hope you have a great day wherever you are,
and Happy White Day to all of you out there in Interwebland!