[news] MadCatz signs with MLG

Via MarkMan’s Twiiter, Madcatz signed an agreement with MLG to produce branded competition gear. But the interesting line in the press release is that MadCatz will be an official sponsor of MLG. There are some interesting conspiracies that can be pulled out out this, so let me put on my tin foil hat.

• MadCatz bought Tritton not long ago. Was it a prerequisite for the MLG deal?
• Since MadCatz produces the Capcom Fightsticks, can MLG use this as leverage to get Street Fighter on the circuit?
• MadCatz has signed players like Daigo Umehara, will there be a Team MadCatz vs Team MLG battles?
• Will the agreement allow MadCatz to continue to support independent tournaments like MWC and Super NorCal?
• Can the independent scene be the breeding ground for MadCatz and MLG to scout new players?

There is a potential for major shifts in the competitive scene. Who knows how things will turn out post EVO season.

MLG vs The Street Fighter Community

Not that long ago, MLG brought Tekken 6 into their scene. Now I was a little curious as to why Super Street Fighter 4 wasn’t also included. Fortunately, the folks over at djwheat.tv managed to get an interview with MLG co-founder Sundance DiGiovanni and they briefly explain the situation.

WordPress won’t embed the interview video, so I will link it here.
Time Code:
Video – Part 2 @12:20 & @58:00 + all of Part 3
MP3 – @52:00 & @97:55

From my impressions of the interview, there seems to be a bit of bad blood back in the early days of the Street Fighter scene. MLG’s first attempt to support the scene was met with immature players booing and general intolerance at non-fighting games. Because of that, MLG has been gun shy about sponsoring another tournament. Now that we have grown up a little, MLG and Capcom are slowly working together to give the Street Fighter Community another chance.

However, there still appears to be a few remaining people who are still bitter about MLG’s dealings that they are willing to sabotage the goodwill everyone is trying to rebuild. The post interview commentary goes into detail about the subject, but to summarize, an unknown person was trying to build a new EVO-like international tournament. The event was disbanded afterwards but not before conning a bunch of people booking flight and hotel in advanced. The organizer stated he was bribed by an MLG employee and left forum entirely. It was bad enough MLG has to do damage control in the thread, but Capcom Japan also found the thread. Before MLG can explain their side of the story, Capcom Japan read the thread and assumed MLG was destroying independent tournament communities and stopped all plans with MLG entirely. Sundance DiGiovanni did not confirm any of the story nor did he say anything in detail, it is pure speculation by the djwheat crew. But if any of this is true, the voice of the community holds powerful sway in corporate decisions.

If the wall of text is too much, here’s my point of view:

• MLG wants Street Fighter to be a part of the circuit
• A bitter past may have left salty people trying to sabotage MLG’s attempts with Capcom
• Capcom Japan believes MLG is harming the independent tournament scene
• MLG has a stigma of being an over-controlling organization

So how can we fix this?

• Be aware of the scene. The more we know, the better we can voice our opinion to Capcom and MLG.

Whether or not you believe any of this, I leave up to you. For all I know, I could have been spouting propaganda the whole time. But I want to believe that we, the community, can help push MLG and Capcom and bring Street Fighter to the main stage.

Status: procrastination

I apologize to anyone who likes reading my material, I’m really lazy about using my blog. I love my games too much and get distracted to post anything decent. So, in an effort to curb my bad habit, I’m going to attempt to keep my ramblings to one paragraph at the most. I hope that prevents me from getting the “oh this is too much work to type” mentality. But I’ll do that after my next post since I’ve already typed it in advance.

By the way, I’m currently training for the EVO tournament next month. I’ll find some time to post something about it then.

[Rant] What is Game of the Year Material?

It’s amazing how lazy I’ve been at updating my page. Mostly because I haven’t had anything I wanted to say that other sites have already said. And now that Game of the Year season is in full swing, I wondered what made these games qualify in the first place. I could ramble on about hype, sales, and popularity, but I’m not a good judge in any of those areas. No, I want to talk specifically is about Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed 2 and why so many people have it on their lists.

I spent the last few weeks going through every part of the new assassin’s game and I can safely say I have seen two extreme sides to this game. On one, I enjoyed the story and the concept of the game. On the other, the game is so full of bugs that I am surprised it passed Sony’s and Microsoft’s quality control. I know not every game is perfect so small things like oddly handled jumps and AI decisions are stuff I can forgive. What really stands out is that Ubisoft managed to get away with bugs that would normally cause a game to fail certification process. And I’m going to rant on two of those bugs.

The first and probably the most obvious double twin-assassination move. Reports are all over the internet about the high chance the game will crash hard when the hidden blades kill two people at the same time and then two more in quick succession.  I stumbled onto this when I was attempting to assassinate a target in the middle of a crowd. By mistake, I killed the innocent people around me. In my rush to chase the target, I killed two more and the game promptly locks up. Although I can see how this bug may have been missed, since the ability is not unlocked that early on and combat is merely a recommendation. This would also make certain combat related achievements hard to unlock, which leads me to my next bug.

Achievements and trophies does not unlock properly. Many of the story related ones are broken because the save system and unlock system are not synchronized. The auto-save the game creates during the moment a trophy achievement is actually ahead when the trigger occurs. So, if by chance the game quits when the save happens but before the unlock, the will never give the unlock until the next playthrough. Another trophy achievement bug is about the character upgrades. The game has different sizes of item bags available at certain times. When a large item bag is purchased, the smaller bags are locked out. Logically, that makes sense because a smaller bag would be useless. However, the unlock checks for every item purchased and not the highest level, even though that is what the requirement describes. What this means is that this unlock will never happen as soon as a player skips a bag size. I don’t know exactly what is in the certification process, but I am certain this would cause any other game to get rejected.

So why does this game get a pass when others normally wouldn’t? Maybe the game was too big for QA to deal with in a short time frame. Perhaps Sony and Microsoft are willing to forgive since the hype and popularity will move consoles. Or Ubisoft simply just paid them off. Whatever the conspiracy, it baffles me why something like this can get nominated for game of the year.

And that brings me back to my point. What does “Game of the Year” mean anymore? It’s just dark marketing magic that revives games from the dead. Any pride and respect the term carried are part of the illusion. It’s the new mass appeal of video games that allowed me to see through the veil. “Truth is nothing and everything is permitted”.

[Afterthoughts] It’s not just about the cake.

So I finally decided to take a break from my usual gaming and anime schedule to make a post. At least that twitter app on the side bar is helping me with my mini-posts. Anyhow, I’m taking a bit of a break from Titan Studios’ Fat Princess. I’ve been playing it a lot recently. And with all of those battles under my belt, I thought I should share some advice on how to enjoy a good match.

Everyone go to work
At that start of the battle, if over half of your team grabs the worker hat, you’re in for a fast fight. I found that the team who gathers all of the stone resources at the start will usually win. On every map, there is a central location where all of stone is mined. By preventing the other team from controlling this point, they are much slower at upgrading their classes.

Stop exploding you cowards
Famous lines from the great Zapp Brannigan and it holds true to Fat Princess. There are two meanings behind this. One is to know when to retreat. It is faster to run back a few steps, hold still to recover health, and head back into the fight. Dying in Fat Princess makes you wait 5 seconds before you can respawn. Then you have to go pick a hat and hike across the map. If you stop dying, you’re more than likely to unlock the Thuggee trophy (kill 88 enemies in a single online game without dying).

The second meaning behind the quote is about the siege bombs. When the worker class is upgraded, the dispenser will start to drop bombs. They’re mainly meant to blow up the other team’s doors. But they’re mostly abused and are thrown blindly into the frontlines. If you ever see one come at you, just run. Stop what you’re doing and run. These bombs have a nasty habit of causing friendly fire. Be especially careful when fire wizards are around. One fire blast and that bomb will explode in your hands. Also get rid of any bomb piles that accumulate at your base. I seen one pile that was spread in such a way that the resulting chain reaction annihilated the base, leaving it empty for raiding.

Build a three-man outpost turret
On certain maps, there are outposts along the main path. Have two upgraded priests and a ranger sit together at the top of the tower and you can kill any target in less than a second. Dark priests can drain the life of a target fairly quickly. So having two will leave the target with a sliver of life instantly. But dark priests alone can’t make the kill. Have the ranger spam arrow shots and mayhem ensues. When all three hold on the lock-on button, everyone will always target the same person. One priest may have to pull double duty and spam the group heal from time to time. But watch out when the enemy charges together. Two or three fully charged mages attacking simultaneously can break this setup.

Soccer slaughter abuse
There are some trophies that are hard to do in regular battles. Setup an online room full of bots on a soccer map they will blindly follow the soccer ball, making them easy targets. This is the easiest way to get the Ring Sting, Who’s Your Daddy?, and Thuggee trophies.

Don’t be stale, mate
One major complaint I’ve been hearing a lot from other people are the matches ending in stalemate. Technically, battles of attrition do have one side winning with the combined point total. But these long matches are a pain to deal with. If you’re not willing to endure another extended match, play the other modes like Team Deathmatch. That “Jump In” button always seems to put me in the usual “Rescue the Princess” mode, so I have to mess around with the custom game settings.

I hope Titan Studios continues to update the game with new maps and items. After playing Fat Princess every night, things are getting a bit mindless. Maybe some cake will fix things.

Don’t Mind Me…

Things are a little messy while I’m linking all sorts of social networks together. Anyhow, there isn’t much for me to say about E3 since everyone else has pretty much said everything. And, after years of observation, I finally created a youtube account for myself to upload my Anime Evo 09 footage. Fun times are here at last.

As a tease of my uploads, here’s my favorite clip from the Final Fantasy Tournament battles.

[Afterthoughts]What’s new Bub… and Bob.

In my early days of gaming, Taito’s Bubble Bobble on the NES holds a special place for me. It was one of the few games that my mom played. And with co-op, we spent many summer days going through the 100+ levels together. So when Square-Enix released Bubble Bobble Plus for WiiWare, I was quite excited to try it out. (And if you thought that I was going to talk about the new Wolverine game, sorry about that).

-New Graphics
Bubble Bobble Plus follows in the footsteps of Bionic Commando Re-Armed and Megaman 9. The updated look is great on the new tv screens. But this also made things more difficult to play (I’ll explain that later).

-A Lot of Levels
The game uses the arcade’s 100+ classic level layout as well as the “super” versions. Also included is 100+ levels of 4-player “arranged” mode with its own “super” versions. That’s over 400 levels to play through. And then there are two extra 50-level packs for that special challenge. It costs 600 Nintendo Wii Points to get the initial 400-level mix and 200 Nintendo Wii Points for each of the level packs. A grand total of 1000 Points for 500 levels seems like a fair deal to me.

-Additional Game Mechanics
In the “arranged” levels, there are sloped platforms. The player standing on those slopes blow bubbles in parallel with the slope. I haven’t figured if this is a good or bad thing yet. At least it makes those new levels feel really different than normal flat blocks.

-Modified Collision Detection
Thanks to the new 3D graphics, I found out the hard way that the game plays very differently from old NES counterpart. Enemies can clip slightly into the walls and platforms but will kill you the instant your pixel and their pixel touch. That made many awkward deaths very frustrating. Also, bubbles will pop the instant it leaves the mouth instead of appearing for a brief moment. It fundamentally changes how certain levels are played. For example, in the “JUMP” level of the classic set, I would jump and blow bubbles through the circular block to climb my way up on the NES version. The bubbles would momentarily stay while I jumped up leaving new bubbles as platforms. The remake version would have those same bubbles pop before I have the chance to jump on them. One last thing about the new collision system is that the collision priorities are rearranged. In the NES version, I can do the “kiss of death” on stages with stair-like platforms. Standing right next to a step, I would blow a bubble right at the moment an enemy “walked down the stairs”. I tried doing that in the remake and got myself killed.

-More Aggresive Enemies
It seems like the enemies movement patterns have changed in the remake. Instead of always blindly walking back and forth, the new enemies will make more attempts to jump from below and give chase. Certain enemies would the hug the walls a lot longer or throw projectiles more often from a greater distance.

-Different Item Effects
This totally messed me up the first time I encountered them. The thunder crash item, where lightning bolts fly through the screen to kill enemies, doesn’t actually clear the level if enemies are in the corners. The fire bubbles doesn’t stay on the floor for a long time like the NES version. And it is impossible to walk through the fire since the stun animation forces you to stay in place. The same goes with the thunder bubble. The stun animation is a lot longer than the NES version to the point where it often made me mistime my jumps and landings.

-Arranged Gravity Physics
Falling in the world of Bubble Bobble Plus is completely different from the NES version. There is slight acceleration the moment a body leaves a platform. Although terminal velocity is reach really quickly, the falling speed is bit faster than the NES version. For example, there is one classic level where a tower of enemies would fall together the moment the level starts. However, each enemy falls one at a time with gaps in between instead of all of them falling at the same time and speed. One more thing about the new physics is about the jumping. On the NES, with the speed shoes item, overall player player speed is increased including jumping and falling. In the remake, only the walking speed is increased. That one little change completely made my years of practice useless.

-Missing Sound Effects
This is really a minor thing, but there are certain memorable sound effects that don’t play in Plus. So far, I noticed that the red ball of death the white cloak monsters roll out won’t make an exploding noise. The earthquake spellbook doesn’t make the loud thundering thud. Even the bouncing spark doesn’t trigger the enemy death sound when it happens.

-No Password Level Select
Or any form of level select as far as I can tell. A neat thing about the NES version is that a password is given when you ran out of lives. I had little notes written all over the place to help keep track of my progress and favorite levels. Seeing that Bubble Bobble Plus is more like a remake of the arcade game rather than the NES, I guess that’s why there is no way to select levels. Also, BBAJI is forever burned into my memory.

I guess Bubble Bobble Plus could of been worse. I remember trying the DS version and not liking the coloured bubbles mechanic. I wish someone ported Bubble Symphony with online play. That would be awesome.

It Must Be Hard To Stay In Character

In my music collection, I have several character albums from various anime. One day, my friends asked “why I like to listen to these songs?”. My response was that I love the talent of the voice actors.

A unique aspect of character albums is that the voice actors have to sing in the same tone as the character they are portraying. But to fully appreciate the effort, I have to know the context of the characters from the series. Without that, the song itself sounds like any other generic pop track.

Then I was asked “why take the extra step to enjoy a song?”. I answered that I love to find tracks of characters that wouldn’t normally be singers in their world. I wanted to hear if the voice actor is capable of giving a pleasing song while still being in character. Since I’m not a voice actor, I could only imagine how difficult to pull off such feats. In some cases, a song doesn’t sound right because of the character restriction. So when I do find a pleasant song, I get a warm fuzzy feeling that always makes me smile. Its another example of how I like to march to the beat of a different drum.

[Afterthoughts] I’m Late to the Lagann Party

With all of the fan art and collectible figures floating around the web, I finally decided(read: caved in) to check out Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. And if I had to boil it down to a single word, it would be “RIDICULOUS!”(in caps).

There is so much eye candy and fan service in Gurren Lagann that it is almost a sensory overload. Everything from sexy flirts to the camera to massive mecha explosions, the show keeps cramming the absurdity level down your throat. And with a plot so fast, you don’t have time to choke on it. The plot never explains everything in detail and Gurren Lagann accepts it as the way things are without question. There was not a single episode where I didn’t throw my hands in the air while I screamed for my sanity.

But to get all of that strangeness work, Gurren Lagann heavily borrows themes from other anime and games to keep the show familiar enough so that it won’t break the thinly stretched suspension of disbelief. To prove that, I present the following case:

*This is a spoiler warning, so I leave you with this*

*Now that’s out of the way, back to spoilers*

Where have I seen this plot before?
- Eureka 7′s Renton Thurston storyline
- Xenogears’ entire concept
Why does everyone look familar?
- Xenogears’ Fei Fong Wong vs. Gurren Lagann’s Rossiu Adai (actually all of Xenogears when I think about it)
- Captain Harlock vs. Simon(older version)
Want something similar but with an opposite style storytelling?
- Watch any Gundam series
- Ergo Proxy‘s end of the world
Huh? You want even more ridiculous plot and fan service?
- Yumeria‘s bizarre fantasy dreams
- Vandread‘s gender separation(or not)

By the time I has realized any of this, I wouldn’t care anymore and just wanted enjoy the ride. And what a fun ride it is.

[Quick Impressions] The King of Fighters XII Experience

A couple of weeks ago, my favorite arcade installed a King of Fighters XII machine. Much like the Street Fighter 4 cabinets, the machine was using a 4:3 CRT monitor instead of a widescreen setup. It made jumping and judging distances awkward. But the setup also made Goro Daimon and Terry Bogard look less bulky. And when I got my chance to play this latest iteration, I promptly got my butt kicked. But not because of the skewed resolution (though it did have an affect).

The major reason why I lost so badly is because this new King of Fighters game is a true series reset. Instead of the frantic tag-based gameplay used in the last entry, King of Fighters XII plays a lot more like the KOF’94 and KOF’95 games. For example, special moves that use heavy attacks have a significantly slower wind-up compared to their light versions. Also, every character seemed to have gone back to the basics, reverting back to a 3-5 move set list. This was especially true for Kyo Kusanagi. The most probable and sensible reason for that is SNK’s dedication to keeping the game in 2D. The game would take way too long to complete if every move and character in KOF history was animated.

In the end, my experience was quite a slap to my face because, from watching the trailers and youtube captures, the game still moves pretty fast despite a feeling like a slower game. I still haven’t figured out how to pull off those Critical Counter moves. [Update]: I managed to hit with a Critical Counter the other day. It plays almost like Capcom Vs. SNK 2′s A-Groove Custom Combo system. It feels weird trying to intentionally hit with it. I suppose it would be better once I get some more practice in.

By the way, the King of Fighters XII machine was setup with English audio. It sounded kinda odd at first. Luckily, the place was pretty loud so I barely heard anything that was too distracting. I just hope that the home versions will have both Japanese and English localizations.