Seeing Pie in the Sky as I Climb on by

Eagle's Tower is proving rather labyrinthine. This situation's mostly due to my re-trading the boomerang for my shovel (which didn't even pay off), since that handy missile can go over the floor panels that the crystal ball switches raise. Some extra running around has made up the difference, but only too late did I remember (with the prompting of an owl statue) that the key to this dungeon is to knock down the pillars on the second floor.

Being an older game, the order in which you take out the pillars doesn't matter. If you knock down two (out of four) that are directly across from each other, the dungeon doesn't suddenly lean to that side - though that would be an incredible thing to implement with an earth temple in a new Zelda game.

Maybe this dungeon could be a tall barrow that had become a kind of cavern, and knocking out ceiling to floor supports caused the dungeon to lean, which would open up new paths and give you access to areas outside the dungeon that were otherwise inaccessible. Being a Zelda game, if you ever wanted to restore the temple to a level state you could call on the help of some sort of earth-dwelling creature. Maybe it could be a Mogma, as introduced in Skyward Sword.

Plus, the boss battle for the dungeon could make good use of the lean mechanic as well. Perhaps rather than being in a separate room, you need to fight the boss in the main room of the dungeon, and leaning the whole thing could play a part in the battle.

Curious Strength

The realization that the next two chapters of The White-Luck Warrior are set in the same place was astounding. Bakker numbers his chapters, dresses them up with quotations from his world's scriptures, thinkers, and philosophers, and labels them with their geographic area. So, having two consecutive chapters in the same place, though it's been slow otherwise, really highlighted the movement of the two groups that each chapter follows.

The first of these two treats with Achamian, Mimara, and the Skin Eaters as they rush on toward Golgotterath with the aid of the Nonman Cleric's Qirri. This substance is an opiate of sorts, though rather than make them drowsy it's been mostly replacing food for the last chunk of their slog. However, as Mimara continues to meet with the skin-spy who was Soma, she starts to question what the Qirri is.

Spurred on by the sight of a straggler, the Stone Hag Koll who has not had any Qirri but keeps up all the same, she eventually breaks down and asks Cleric what the Qirri is. It's revealed to be ash from a funeral pyre. Though why such a substance should have any sort of power isn't really explained.

Perhaps it's because it's the dust of a Nonman, or perhaps because it's one from before the birth of history. The individual's named, but it's a name that means nothing to me, and at most might be a call back to the first trilogy. Though for the single sentence that Bakker dwells on this revelation, if it is a call back it's probably a truly obscure one.

As always, Bakker's imagery is evocative, though I find myself wondering if it's varied enough to sustain such a long piece work as The White Luck Warrior. There's still a lot of dust (even if it is a plain), and there are a lot of coals as well. This chapter (nine) was a curious look into addiction, however. And that is always interesting. Especially since taking such a tack with this part of his story Bakker asks more questions than he answers.

An Edited History

Since I'm in the middle of editing the Doctor Who podcast that I co-host - TelosAM - I've had precious little time for video games. But, what takes time, but no time? Grinding in J-RPGs of course! So I've set out to (somewhat) needlessly grind in Radiant Historia.

Not a whole lot of interesting stuff happens in battles, except that enemies seem to drop items quite frequently, and the gold they give out is enough to fully arm my party. Of course, my familiarity with the battle system has also improved, and linking attacks together is now second nature, though I've yet to see any "dual tech" style moves resulting from characters attacking in a set order or with specific attacks.

Well, there are another 2 tracks to edit, so I've plenty of time for such discoveries.

A Twist and a Tell

The twist in Neuropath was completely unassumed. When it turned out that one of the steady characters turned out to be the villain I was definitely thrown for a loop.

So I should have seen what would became of the meeting of Maithenet (the uncle), Inrilitas, and Kelmomas (the two nephews, sons of Kellhus). All three are of the Dunyain - the sect of people who train themselves to read the minutiae of body language and expression and harness the power of pure reason - so the meeting was sure to be momentous. Still, I never would have guessed that one of those three would lose their momentum completely.

Yet, such sleight of pen is always obvious in hindsight. The character that bites it in this chapter is also the one who had earlier said something about being as dour and terrible as possible. Amid his ramblings, he also said something or other about sacrifice. And he did not strike me as one who spoke without action.

Climbing to the Eagles and Meeting a Musical Fish

Having fallen afoul of  a poor choice in spots to jump from, I had to re-climb the mountains to Eagle's Tower. Along the way, though I filled out my ocarina repertoire.

Stopping into a small cave, I approached the giant fish there and was taught Manbo's Mambo, a song that teleports me back to Manbo's Pond whenever I play it on the field. Said pond is a decent locale, fairly central, and right next to Crazy Tracy's. So, even if using her automatic heart-refilling medicine adds to your death count, at least it saves you from having to see the game over screen.

Eagle's Tower itself looks like it's designed similarly to Ganon's Tower from A Link to the Past. Though I imagine it's not quite so long a dungeon. Still, those multi-coloured floor panels and crystal ball switches abound, which leads me to the comparison with Ganon's Tower in the first place.

If Link's Awakening was originally planned as a remake of A Link to the Past, maybe Eagle's Tower was from an early version of the game, or at the point when the developer's starting losing steam. Of course, it's got a few floors to suggest otherwise.

Spellbinding Writing

Bakker's The Aspect Emperor trilogy may be dense, but his magic crackles from the page.

Maybe it's the idea that magic users are marked as damned for their inborn ability to manipulate the physical world and thus violate the gods' laws.

Maybe it's because so much of his description of magic involves various kinds of light.

Maybe it's simply because his is the first magic system I've encountered that I've really enjoyed since The Sword of Truth (aside from A Song of Ice and Fire, the only series I've really ever read to date).

Whatever the case, he can dole out a battle in the chapter before, a tete-a-tete in the section before, and dress it up with mention of a naked nubile woman, but add magic into that last one and the honey's so sweet my reading teeth are on the verge of melting. Of course, in chapter eight he doesn't mention magic itself so much as delve into the way in which humans and gods (the World and the Outside) interact. He expresses this relationship beautifully in the possessed Psatma Nannaferi, the outlawed high-priestess of Yatwer, the terrible Goddess of Birth.

The Climb to Eagle's Tower

Maybe it's because I'm now playing it on a Game Boy Colour. Or maybe it's because I pushed a little bit further to the east. Whatever the case, I'm no longer stuck in Link's Awakening. Though I did jump down from where I needed to be into a hole. There was the promise of loot, and I couldn't resist.

At any rate, what had me stuck before was where the seventh dungeon is. For the longest time, I'd been trying to get up the western mountain range, but had never really paid much attention to the eastern cluster. I climbed that cluster, and after the network of caves, found Eagle's Tower.

So, now the game can continue, and once I lose the bird that's currently (and quite helpfully) following me, I'll check out this game's extra dungeon.

It Is the Size of a Dusty Tome...

Bakker really likes his dust. Over the course of chapter 7 in The White-Luck Warrior, he must refer to the pattern and the flow of dust at least every second page. I understand that the terrain the Great Ordeal is going through is terribly dry, and so perhaps dust is all there is to stir, but it's often described in a similar way.

Of course, so much dust could be Bakker's way of reminding us of our own position as dust in the wind. Though, his big philosophical sticking point is to never be certain, which doesn't necessarily mean that humand endeavours that span but a lifetime are pointless. How could anyone be certain of such a thing?

Away Game Special: Jumping Back to Anodyne

In any game, it's a great feeling to be stuck until you find the foothold you need to exploit to progress.

After finishing the demo of Anodyne and loading my save from it into the full game, I was adrift in the game's main field. At least, I imagine it's the main field. But, being limited in what I could do, I did what I could and it worked! Whatever had captured one cat was scared off by another, and that lead to a chain of events that unlocked one of the most basic functions in adventure games - jumping.

So far it looks like only small holes need to be jumped, but there may well be some sort of dash power-up that extends your jump, like combining the Pegasus boots with the Roc's feather in a Link's Awakening.

Villainous Me

Bakker does something rather strange with some characters. Rather than going out and out and taking the perspective of certain characters, he'll instead have a third person narrator tell thing from a given perspective.

In this case, back in the Meorn Wilderness (The Mop), we're given some things from the perspective of Soma, the one among Achamian's party revealed to be a skin-spy. As was made pretty clear in Neuropath, Bakker's got no problem writing disturbing things, and even from the first few pages of chapter six of The White-Luck Warrior this is what we're given from Soma's perspective.

Bakker doesn't just make his villains evil, he makes them despicable while also being darkly sympathetic. He does so by talking, for example, about the mixture of hate and lust and desire that the skin-spy Soma feels whenever he looks at Mimara. In fact, where other authors might disturb readers by showing them something aberrantly different and abjectly terrifying, Bakker's m.o. appears to be trying to disturb people by showing them parts of such villainy within themselves.

This quality among his villains is another thing that makes his works great, and that will likely keep his fantasy writing largely underground.

Rooted Inside the Deku Tree

It's a bit disappointing inside the Deku Tree. I was hoping that it'd be laid out like the first dungeon of Ocarina of Time. However, the music's a nod to that gem of a game -- it's a slower, slightly ominous remix of Saria's Song. However, the existence of the Deku Tree in the world of Rosy Rupeeland makes me wonder even more how this game fits into the Zelda timeline.

I mean, Link or Zelda haven't shown up (yet), but the Deku Tree and Lon Lon Meadow make appearances. Perhaps the seedling that lives beside the Deku tree is the one that grows into the Deku Tree from Wind Waker, or from Ocarina of Time. Aesthetically, the Deku Tree that Tingle meets is closer to the former, so maybe this game takes place in that part of the "official" timeline.

Speculations aside, this is the first non-linear dungeon. There's a puzzle here much like the one in Lord Jabu Jabu's Belly in Ocarina of Time. After you open up the ladder chutes on the first basement, three plants grow over the main chute. As far as I can figure, you need to find and defeat all three of these plants' roots/hearts to open the way forward.

What's got me stuck, though is that I need "poison to defeat poison" - I must've missed a recipe or an item, because I can't bat back the plants' poison's spit or their mushrooms' spores, and I can't brew up poison. There's the Scrap Broth, but it does nothing.

So, I never thought it would happen, but I'm stuck in Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland. For now.

Bakker and Sympathy?

The White Luck Warrior, no, R. Scott Bakker's fantasy writing in general, is just like the The Silmarillion. Except Bakker's characters are more compelling, and more fleshed out than those that appear in Tolkien's world lore text.

Still, the comparison stands because both books are primarily concerned with world-building to the point where its neck-and-neck with plot development. So much so that at times, the world building overtakes the plot. Both books also give very little foothold to those unfamiliar with fantasy and its propensity for strangeness, especially with characters who are supposedly deities (or demi-gods).

Still, well, my older brother's been over for the last few days, and he's getting over a virus - coughing to the point where "hacking up a lung" almost literally applies. While reading The White-Luck Warrior, I was listening to this hacking, and could hardly help but feel the need to cough in sympathy. How does this relate to The White-Luck Warrior?

Well, the part where Kelmomas and Inrilatis (two sons of Kellhus, the Aspect Emperor) are talking about madness and Inrilatis continues to read Kelmomas to the point where he loses control of his facade they mention the idea that people are simply what they appear.

On the face of it, you might take issue with this assertion. Surely, the depth of human feeling and thought are not etched onto people's faces, expressions, and actions - you could say. But, the idea in Bakker's book, I think, is that even these things betray people because they aren't minutely controlled.

So, if someone were to master the meaning of every bit of minutiae the human face and body produce, they could, possibly, have what appears to be some form of telepathy. So much of what we do while thinking and feeling is, after all, subconscious. Including, I argue, sympathetic reactions such as my urge to cough.

Smelling Great, Healing Mates

Its core mechanic - collecting rupees to pay for everything (and getting rupees for doing most things) - sounds like it should get boring quickly. But the more I play Rosy Rupeeland, the more I'm finding the opposite to be true.

The game has some kind of charm - maybe in its colours, or its cartoonish graphics. Whatever the case, the game has this sense of charm and whimsy about it that keeps it fresh. Like some sort of late 20th century Japanese game show, you never know what's going to appear next, and that sense of mystery draws me through all of the rupee gathering and ingredient hunting.

Actually, I find myself flush with useless ingredients at the moment. I have enough to cobble together pieces of recipes here and there, but so many are missing single ingredients that it's kind of frustrating. Though the only recipes that I've gotten in-game use out of, aside from simply selling them, are Tingly and One Love. My bodyguards are taking more heat lately, and so the Tingly's a great preservative, and sheep and cattle run away from combat, so using the perfume is an excellent way to draw them in.

Now, though, the time for livestock baiting and bodyguard healing has passed, and the time to enter the Deku Tree has arrived. Yes, Tingle is entering the Deku Tree - stay tuned.

A Short One, While He's Away

I'm not sure why it took so long to dawn on me, but the Sranc in R. Scott Bakker's fantasy are very much like Tolkien's orcs. Both have their origins in the creation of the world, both are bastardizations of another species, and both are under the power of the big bad.

Though I'm not sure Tolkien ever said anything about orcs being necrophiles. That detail's pure Bakker.

Away Game Special: Anodyne Again

Having finished the demo of Anodyne, I can say with confidence that it is a fine game, and if you're a fan of the Legend of Zelda and A Link To The Past you owe it to yourself to check this game out. Why?

It mixes the top-down adventuring style of those games with the quirk and wit of Earthbound, and wraps it in a mellow soundtrack, making sure to massage all applicable senses during its experiences.

The creators say that it'll take an average gamer 8.5-9.5 hours to finish it, but, from here, those hours will be well-spent indeed.

My only fear, having opened my own wallet for Sean Hogan and Jonathan Kittaka, is that riding around a river on a bunch of dust that you gather with your broom is the extent of their creativity.

Even so, as an unaffiliated player, check out this game!

Comparing an Epic Quality

Bakker continues to weave an excellent tale. Though I'm left wondering why the sections from Mimara's viewpoint are all in the present tense (at least in chapter two). Maybe this tense choice is meant to give a sense of immediacy, or to really throw the reader into the perspective of the one with the judging eye.

It's pretty clear though, that Mimara is not marked for death - otherwise the skin-spy amongst them would have let the Sranc range right over her. Instead, he revealed himself to save her, making me think that the judging eye will need to be turned onto Kellhus to reveal that he is indeed some sort of demon rather than a god. Though Achamian's trek to find the hidden Dûnyain settlement from which Kellhus came will likely work to the same end. 

And that's really it for the plot. Comparing this series to a Song of Ice and Fire may be what happens in every entry, but I think that simplicity is another strike against Bakker's series becoming as popular as Martin's. The scope remains too narrow. For, even though Bakker has multiple viewpoint characters, they're all marching along the same plot line, just at different points, or from different angles.

A Song of Ice and Fire on the other hand is like a guitar - multiple threads are present, and each is plucked and twanged in a certain sequence to produce a melody. What's curious about its plurality of plot lines, though, is that A Song of Ice and Fire has yet to be about saving the world as it's known and yet it's more epic than The Aspect Emperor - which takes as its focus the classic world-changing conflict.

After all, It's not without reason that reading The White-Luck Warrior brings Christopher Lee's voice to mind and has me imagining Final Fantasy VI sprites acting out some of the book's scenes.

Away Game Special: Where Stereotypical Librarians Reign

Say what you will about Majora's Mask, but the Bomber's Notebook is an excellent way to keep track of side quests. Playing Skyward Sword in snatches definitely makes remembering side quests rather difficult. Putting little dialogue boxes over characters' heads does work as a good reminder, but having to rove around looking for characters with said bubbles over their heads is almost as bad as roving around talking with everyone you meet.

Anyway, the whole reason why side quests were emphasized in my most recent (and last for the time being, alas) Skyward Sword play through, is because all that's left of the main game (as far as I know) is the final silent realm, the last dungeon, and the final boss. Those last two points are pretty moot as Zelda's final dungeons are always just bigger dungeons, and Zelda's final bosses are always (especially in Twilight Princess) epic challenges that dare you to push your skills beyond what you've done before. But that silent realm bit before them.

The silent realm, for all the flack it's gotten, is something I kind of admire. There's not much in Zelda games that can put you on edge like a 3-D stealth/collect section, and this is both good and bad. It's good because it evokes such a visceral reaction. And it's bad for the same reason, but also because it does so in such a way as to deter players (at least those playing over large spans of time) from progressing in the game.

If I was just playing through Skyward Sword on my own, the silent realms would be sections that might give some grief, but would be worked through relatively quickly. But playing with another person, these parts of the game just aren't the sort of thing that you want to charge into when your time with that other person is already short.

What I'm getting at here, in my own roundabout way, is that I hope Zelda on the Wii U doesn't have this sort of stealth/collect mechanic - especially if they succeed in integrating/creating some sort of multiplayer story mode. If they do, such sections would have incredible potential to take the manic, raw energy of a four player New Super Mario Bros. Wii session to all new heights.

More Fortunate Comparisons

It hasn't happened yet, so I'm going to propose it now. Christopher Lee should do an audio version of R. Scott Bakker's The Aspect Emperor series. That's the kind of voice that could weave an aural tapestry to match the textual one Bakker creates. These words, sorcerous murmurings, or a thing like the laughter of crows among thunder, deserve such a voice.

That said, The White-Luck Warrior has been a much easier read for me. The Judging Eye was very slow going, I thought, though maybe that's just a matter of not having read for fun for quite some time before picking that one up nearly a year ago.

Having re-acclimatized myself to casual reading - though not suspending my own judging eye - The White-Luck Warrior pulls me in each time I pick it up and only scarcely can I shake myself from it. Though I can see why this series and Bakker himself haven't caught fire.

Between jumping between tenses, describing characters and emotions with snippets of history or philosophical musing, it isn't as quick a read as George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books can be. Instead, Bakker compares better to The Silmarillion, though it has a much more interesting narrative voice to it. As a result of this better voice, the description of the First Apocalypse and the damnation of sorcerors, the war between the Nonmen and the Inchoroi, and of an ancient primeval forest wherein it's as dark as the cavernous womb of a mountain is fascinating no matter how much deeper it is than just directly showing some detail or other about it.

Plus, Bakker's magic system is incredible. A simple spoken mechanism to work spells, but the underlying source of power and the abilities and deficits of the different sorcerous schools (being plagued with dreams wherein they re-live the great hero Seswatha's battle against the No-God Mog-Pharau, as an example) are all brilliant.

No matter how slowly the story moves amongst the thicket of words, I'm on the edge of my seat to see if Achamian, Mimara and the Sranc-hunting Skin-Eaters will make it through to the Coffers.

Away Game Special: Anodyne

Getting away from console gaming is fine with me, though Anodyne definitely owes a lot to the NES/SNES era of action adventure games. Because it's a computer-based game, it also smacks quite a bit of RPGMaker 2000 to me. I think it's mostly the game's graphical style, since squat sprites and square environments are that application's bread and butter.

Anyway, though I've only nibbled at the demo so far, Anodyne is a smooth experience that is just slightly off of straightforward. No hands are held, since the game's good at what old school action adventure games were - giving you a finite number of options to go forward and making it possible for you to try them until you find success. And really, that's what's missing from a lot of modern adventure games, the puzzle aspect that doesn't have to be a brainteaser, but can just be bump in the road that's too high to go over, too wide to go around, but completely combustible since you have bombs, or already burrowed through if you look hard enough.

So, though I'm in no way affiliated with the makers of the game, If you haven't already, check out Anodyne here.

Some Luck in the Beginning

Thankfully, The White-Luck Warrior opens with a handy re-cap chapter. The first trilogy is summed up, and then the events in each major character's arc from The Judging Eye is summarized.

Truth be told, I found The Judging Eye to be a bit of a slog, at the beginning.

Where George R.R. Martin tells his story with characters at the fore, and with a crisp sort of prose, Bakker tells his with world-building at the fore. But the world isn't so directly based on something easy like a rotated world map, magic, and the War of the Roses. The world of Bakker's fantasy epic is much more original. And as such, there aren't many analogues to fall back on or to prop up understanding.

The only thing that seems like it can be taken for granted is that the universe's cosmology is similar to most major religious conceptions of our own. There's a god of one sort or another, and then scads more that are much more specialized. But even then, the way that Bakker presents his characters, his narrative, and his world, causes doubts to rise about such a large scale certainty.

Nonetheless, Achamian and the Skin Eaters have left Cil-Aujus, and are now heading into The Mop, a dark and ancient forest.

A huge underground complex, and a primeval forest - both are fantasy mainstays, right?

But Cil-Aujus makes Moria look like a breakfast of soft-boiled eggs, so let's see how the forest stacks up against something like Mirkwood.

Though, before we get more of Achamian, Mimara, and the Skin Eaters, it's back over to Sorweel, the captive prince among the Great Ordeal that Anasûrimbor Kellhus has marching against The Consult. That is, of course, The group that many believe are conspiring to revive the dread No-God Mog-Pharau, a being that threatens the very fabric of existence.

Away Game Special: Skyward Sword

Skyward Sword might be the longest Zelda game that I've played to date. Not necessarily because the game itself looks like it'll take 50 hours to complete, but because I've been playing it in small doses over the last year and a half.  Still - it's definitely one of the longest Zelda games to date - though most of that is padding.

The game's visual style definitely helps this, since it's a nice distraction from having to run from place to place and back again. The fight against the parasite that plagued Levias was pretty epic, too. That's definitely something this game has going for it - the boss battles are all generally pretty huge - a squid that destroys the ship that was a dungeon, an ancient mech that you need to use its own weapons against, to a parasite that you fight on the very back of its host. The mechanics of the fights might not be too complex, but they're still incredible to watch and experience.

Yet, what's persistently been troublesome in Nintendo games, even from the very first Super Mario Bros. game, underwater travel is a pain. It's even worse in 3D, where the camera has to be fought against at every dive and wriggle. And trying to find stuff, like the tadtones in the Faron Woods? If it wasn't for dowsing it would've been a total pain.

Losing all of your items when you enter the Eldin Volcano area is pretty neat, though. Hopefully it's less than a few weeks before I find out how this all shakes out.

Prog & Watch

Germany has maintained its reputation as the home of badass heavy metal concepts. Or, at least, their translations of some of the Game & Watch names makes me think so.

The titles in question? Turtle Bridge, which became "Die lebende Brücke"  ("The Living Bridge"), and "Lion," which became "Der Lowe ist los!" Both of those names would be right at home in the track list of any prog metal concept album.

Aside from the chapter on localization, the latter part of the book offers some vaguely historical material when the final section about Game & Watch cameos and collections comes along.

Learning that the Zelda Game & Watch is unlockable in Game & Watch Gallery Advance has forced me to add it to the games on my "to watch for" list. It sounds like that particular Game & Watch is just a re-tooling of the Legend of Zelda on the NES, but it sill probably has some sort of extra significance. Plus, it's Zelda, so it's got to be good.

At any rate, that wraps it up for the second volume of Pix'n Love's The History of Nintendo. For now.

There are volumes out there about the Famicom/NES and the Gameboy series, so I'll definitely be picking them up once they're available. Hopefully, though, they have the first volume's focus on history and building social context, and keep collectors' information to a minimum.

Away Game Special: Shining from the Future

I thought the intro to Golden Sun Dark Dawn was long, but clearly I'd forgotten about the intros for the Shining Force games. What's worse though, unless the wiimote just doesn't have the button for it, the Shining Force intros can't be skipped and happen before you're even given the option to start the game.

Over long prologue-type cut-scenes aside, there's more freedom than I remember in those games. It's strange how they're like a mash-up between a standard turn-based strategy game and something along the lines of Ultima.

The Shining Force games' combat can still be balls-to-the-wall difficult though. even with all the time in the world to sit and strategize, battles still need to be figured through and worked out painstakingly - at least at the game's beginning, when you haven't had time to grind or properly equip people.

All the same, once these games are reached on my Games List, they're sure to lead to a lot of excellent hours of gaming.

Watching the Game & Watches

So the second volume of Pix n Love's History of Nintendo turns into a collector's manual around the middle.

It's definitely clear that it's not quite so straightforward a history as the first volume was once you see the rarity rankings for all of the Game & Watch (G&W) games, but still. This volume does what it does well, though it's also disappointing.

I mean, the first chapter of the book relates the history of the G&W series. It shares all sorts of trivial information about their creation, and various anecdotes that explain why certain things came out the way they did. But after that chapter it becomes a book full of entries about the various G&W games. There's still some trivia that gets offered up, but otherwise, it's a quiet sort of thing, tucked into the bottom of each entry and several times it's just a bit about how game modes differ.

Pix'n Love refer to themselves as the archaeologists of gaming, and what they've put together backs them up for sure. But volume two of The History of Nintendo is just too much of an artifact catalogue and not enough of a history. There are another 40+ pages, however, so more anecdotes could be found, and more connections could be made.

Away Game Special: Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask

I'm not much a puzzle gamer, but when I play them, I go all out. Like when I ,tried to beat. played my fiancee at Tetris - taking three hours to finally do so.

Because of that, I was pretty pleasantly surprised by Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask on the 3DS. Though, my ability to get through a bunch of the bonus puzzles might be because so many of them use the same mechanic. That is, a lot of the download bonus games involve mapping out a route, or linking together various objects without crossing tubes, tracks, lines, or number boundaries.

The variation on the route mechanic used for the boat puzzles, having to find the rocks in your way, definitely made that one stick out quite a bit. And the puzzle set involving knights and ghosts is almost certainly a nod to Ghosts and Goblins (NES) and Super Ghosts and Goblins (SNES).

The History that Veered Toward Catalogue Territory

The way that the Game & Watch (G&W) games are handled is definitely with a view to collecting them. But, what's most peculiar about the entries that Gorges has written up for each of the different games is how much he emphasizes their stories.

With the later games this makes some sense (they could scroll after all, and had multiple levels), but even early games like Turtle Bridge and Octopus are praised for their story. But these games, and others from their generation, are just one screen deals. Though attaching stories to such simple games really highlights the human mind's propensity to find patterns and add meaning where at first glance there's little to none.

After all, all of the G&W games present players with certain situations, and introduce various characters in doing so. So all the context is there, and then the story is built around it - which is kind of incredible. I mean, these games really show how the mind can fill in minor story gaps so long as all of that story's elements and context are present. Plus, the mental act of filling those gaps is sure to give a great deal of satisfaction.

Of course, as Nintendo discovered through the G&W games and onwards, stimulating players' minds helped to open up wallets as well as imaginations.

Away Game Special: Fire Emblem Awakening

I'm not always at home, and while I'm away I'm not always going to be playing the games from my list. So, since I'm away for the next few days, the next few video game entries will be "Away Games Specials." Today's game? Fire Emblem Awakening for the 3DS. Or, rather, its demo.

A short look into what sounds like a long game (according to episode #324 of Radio Free Nintendo (RFN)), the demo offered on the 3DS e-shop gives a review of the game's basics, introduces the beginnings of its story, and hints at what the new mechanics can do.

However, if I hadn't listened to that episode of RFN, then I'd have no idea that the relationship mechanic could lead to characters marrying and having children. Plus, I'm sure that in the full game every combination of characters doesn't just give your hit rate a 10% boost. That's all that seemed to be in the demo, though.

What bothers me most about the demo, though, is that in the second cinematic it looks like there's a 16-bit sprite in the middle of the inter-dimensional gate. Yet, it's blurred just enough to be impossible to make out.

Maybe it's a character from a Fire Emblem game from the SNES/Super Famicom era? Or just something thrown in by a nameless designer with absolutely no meaning attached to it.

But the more I look at it, the more it looks like a Chrono Trigger sprite.

Down on the D-Pad's original Design

So, once more to the breach, dear friends, to join to ranks of lackluster English.

Yes, I'm reading volume 2 of the History of Nintendo by Florent Georges and Isao Yamazaki. And the English is quite plainly translated indeed. However, where the first volume's errors were mostly minor oversights, I'm noticing that this one has a few issues with tense in the first section. I wonder if they could use an editor over at Pix'n Love?

I know for a fact, though, that Pix'n Love has no need for more researchers - the history of Nintendo's Game & Watch handhelds is as thorough as a 28 page piece can be. It's chock full of diagrams and pictures, and has a few newspaper-style block quotes in it, as well. For good measure certainly. With all of this information packed into such a small space, it's also a grand summary of Gunpei Yokoi's work on the series of toys. That man was truly a genius, and definitely very gifted. Except on one point.

The Donkey Kong Game & Watch was the first video game to ever have a D-Pad.

Yes, that now ubiquitous multidirectional analog control was invented by Gunpei Yokoi (add it to the pile, I say).

Now, of course, Yokoi can't be faulted for the creation of this little four-directional button, but his original idea was to have it on the right hand side of the Game & Watch (and consequentially, it would likely have wound up on the right hand side of controllers in general).

As a life-long gamer, this not only seems incredibly odd, thinking about switching which hand does what while playing games just doesn't compute. Like trying to kiss an elbow, using your right hand for the D-Pad just does not process properly if it's thought about. The right thumb's for various buttons!

Shimmying Out Slowly

More Link's Awakening, of course. Once I get stuck, I try my best to get unstuck. And I've managed to do so! But, like a car in the hands of an inexperienced driver, I've gotten myself unstuck only to find myself stuck in a different way. But at least I'm on my way to getting unstuck completely!

I've found the bird key, and been told about a high tower in the mountains. Ah, were this a 3D Zelda. Then, such hints would be truly useful. I could just turn Link to the mountains and look for any high towers looming forth.

Instead, that sort of thing is impossible. The map helps a bit, but not nearly as much as a 3D perspective would.

On the bright side of things, at the very least, I can see it the entire map, with most detail, all at once.

Rounding off the Sheep Chase

The conclusion of A Wild Sheep Chase is, thankfully, satisfying. Which makes me wonder if there's something to the criticisms of 1Q84 and its being unfocused.

It's a sad ending, however, like a napkin named happiness that's been used to dab up the spilled milk of melancholy. Though, reading the ending, the very final sentence evoked the same feeling as gently waking from a dream. Not a pleasant dream, not a terrifying dream, not a dream that you wish to return to, nor a dream that you wish you could never have again in your life. Just a dream. And wow, what an effect that is for a book to have.

Though, it's disappointing that we never do learn the main character's name. I mean, it would have been helpful to know who he is, even if in the end it's clear that who he is isn't important since he's just an anybody. 'A mediocre person in a mediocre world,' as the man in the black suit might quip. Though I don't think he'd quip with much of anything based on the news that the lead's girlfriend will never be seen again. There's that melancholy.

There's also more of what I'll dub "Lynch" in the last 50 pages of the book. A scene in which the main character talks with someone who is dead and who had been possessed by the sheep.

The way the sheep is described makes it sound so much more malevolent than the way it's described in the start of the book. But what really makes this scene Lynchian, is it's being set in the house on the mountain top as it is dimmed and the heater halts. And the person that he meets, the way his rubbing his hands together is described, makes me think immediately of Mike from the Black Lodge. David Lynch *must have* read this book - or at least been aware of it. It's got the exact same supernatural quality as Twin Peaks, and Lynch's oeuvre more generally.

Up next, The History of Nintendo Vol. 2: The Game & Watch games, an incredible invention.

A Troubling Dream

Link's Awakening continues to give me trouble.

I've got the duck, and followed Ulrira's cryptic clues to the Hen House, but I'm not sure of what the special item is that's near there. Maybe something fire-resistant? It simply seems like that must be the case since there's a narrow cave where a jet a flame is keeping me from progressing. Of course, there's no confirmation of whether or not that is progressing.

Yet, that's the thing with these old games. It's actually possible to get lost or stuck. Not on a game mechanic or specific challenge, but in terms of the overall possibility of running out of possibilities. Or, at the very least, of running out of possibilities that might occur to you as the player.

Blending the Strange with the Standard

What I really like about Murakami is that what he writes, when it involves the bizarre, or supernatural, is a lot like David Lynch's take on it.

Without the horror elements (at least based on 1Q84 and A Wild Sheep Chase), though, yet still retaining that absolutely strange feel. I think that it's mostly Murakami's writing style really helps him to do this. In general it has an airy quality to it; details are not dwelled upon (I've yet to come across a paragraph that focuses in on a person's coat or any such thing), and each motion of his perspective characters is given flesh through his descriptions of their thoughts and states.

And it's this style that makes his stories so readable - despite their mundane strangeness. That is, the way in which he inserts some of the odd into the everyday - the appearance of the Sheep Man later in the book, for example.

And it's always a testament to a writer's powers when you can empathize with their characters.

When the Sheep Man says that the lead can never be with his girlfriend again because he's been too selfish in bringing her with him, my first thought was "I hope that's not true!" After all, we still have the mystery of her ears to get to the bottom of.

Though Murakami does leave the matter of the Little People in 1Q84 rather open.

The Grind

Grinding in the Lazvil Hills has proven pretty easy. I'd forgotten how much gold enemies dropped, and about the game's reward system that tops off your take. So long as you create a few combos, of course.

What makes the area (and the game, more generally) particularly suited to grinding, though, is the lack of random encounters. There's no fear of going too far into an area if there's no threat of winding up stranded there. Seeing battles (not enemies, really) and being able to avoid or pursue them is a great plus. Though a foursome of enemies being represented by just one on the field is kind of misleading.

All the same, now I just need to find an inn so that I can avoid using the consumable Mana Crystals to recover at a save-spot.

The Sheep Revealed

If A Wild Sheep Chase is ever made into a movie, David Lynch has to direct the scene where the main character and his girlfriend go into the Dolphin Hotel. It's so much like the bank scene in the last episode of Twin Peaks. At the very least he should be consulted.

Fan-crew making aside, our lead characters next find some information to move forward on.

His girlfriend's ears are getting no secret messages, but it turns out that the Dolphin Hotel is home to a resource library about sheep, and the owner's eccentric father is the local authority on all things ovine. When the two go up to see him they learn the truth, and we as readers, learn that this sheep is some sort of bizarre spiritual force that has some sort of grand plan for the whole of humanity. As readers, we also no doubt guess that by the end of the book one or the other of the lead characters is going to be possessed by it. Maybe then we'll get a name, which might be pretty good.

Murakami's delivery of the history of Junitaki-cho (where their search has lead our heroes) as a narrative broken up by what the main actor does and observes between his own reading sessions is an excellent bit of first person expression. We're still firmly in this guy's head, even if we aren't quite privy to every last little thought of his. It's also interesting how the Ainu, the native people of Japan, are brought into the story through the relation of Junitaki-cho's history. The way the town's life-long Ainu resident's life is described makes me wonder if perhaps he had been possessed by the sheep-spirit-being.

At any rate, the story progresses and Murakami's power over written images is proven yet again when he compares the look and flight of a moth to a crumpled up piece of paper. Saying that the lead lady of the story looked older after the moth in question flew off of her is also curious, since it brings up ideas of time travel, but Murakami's clearly got enough going on in this book already.

Reviving Radiance

Radiant Historia is an incredible game, but not the easiest to pick up after a few months away. Still, better to pick such a game up and dust off my knowledge of it than to just restart it. The bunch that I'm working through right now are the wrap-up titles, after all.

So I'm still early in the game, and what's really got me bothered about it is that there really aren't many chances offered for grinding. Levelling up isn't the issue, but getting new equipment sure would be useful. Having blown over 1000 gold on a Silver Mail has set me back to less than 500 again, and so there's little I can pick up for the rest of my crew.

Perhaps, since Raynie and Marco have rejoined, I'll be able to get out to the Lazvil Hills and do some grinding before heading forward in the story. The lack of an overworld certainly puts a damper on the grinding, too. But in a game that has you jumping back and forth between nodes of time, I suppose adding regular grinding might just be plain too much.

By any Name?

The sixth section returns to the main character's being filled in on why the sheep in his insurance company newsletter are such a big problem.

After having gone through this part of the book, it's clear why we had to be taken out of the story to get the information from the Rat's letters, but they were delivered poorly. They wouldn't have worked through a prologue, since their placement would be too far from where they were relevant, and theirs isn't the tone or the sensibility of the rest of the book as the book's actual prologue is. Why couldn't he have reminisced about the letters and the Rat when he was on the train? Breaking into it right in the middle of the scene is why I found their placement to be so jarring.

Anyway, I'm glad to see that the girlfriend with the cute ears is back. I was worried that that was just one section in the main character's life and that was that.

Actually, now that the wild sheep chase itself is on, we get the main character and his girlfriend leaving to begin their search.

Their departure is typical, but it involves the main character enlisting the help of the chauffeur of the person that the two are now working for.

What for? Well, to look after his cat while they're off looking for this sheep with the brown wool and star birthmark. Since the main character's cat also has no given name, the three of them work their way into a lengthy conversation about names.

Particularly, they tackle the question of why some things are named and others aren't and what either of these possibilities impart. The whole passage runs from page 178 to 182 (or 178-179, just for matters feline), and is one among many of the philosophical digressions in the book. Young Murakami sure liked to linger in wondering.

Sneaking About

The sneaking mechanic in Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland is both picky and forgiving. So far it's only been used to tail one of the town's kids as he sneaks around various areas.

You follow this guy at a secure distance, keep going from point to point, and eventually found him stopped at one place near water. Then he'll get nervous, hand over and empty bottle and run off. There's always a message in the bottles he's carrying so close to the water, and so he's probably the one who left the bottle and the first message found earlier in the game.

The stealth system's picky because it demands staying in a  particular angle in the boy's line of sight, and will have him stand and whistle until you're in that spot. It's forgiving in that he just stands and whistles rather than running away or whatnot.

Otherwise, Junglo, the game's Tarzan-like character, is proving useful, but going through the forest maze with him is not going to be great. He's got a single heart for health, you see. Though there are these plants in the forest maze that eat scrap broth and make vitamins that sell for 2000 rupees.

A Rat among Sheep

Murakami's tale was taking a very similar avenue to 1Q84 before it got interrupted by the letters from the Rat. Possibly because there's nothing to announce it, or maybe because the section before it is so comic and enjoyable, I found the first letters from the Rat jarring and a little confusing.

However, it does point to something that I've noticed up to this point: None of the male characters (and most of the female characters) have names. they have adjectival phrases like "she would have sex with any guy" or "my partner" for names instead.

Since A Wild Sheep Chase is in first person, maybe this is just a way to sneak around naming characters. After all, this is Murakami's first widely published work. He's not going to be a superstar right out the gate, but he does definitely have the potential. That much is clear from his generous pepperings of evocative imagery. But, as far as I can tell, Murakami's not yet begun to write. Hopefully the main plot doesn't suffer another break.

Two Quick Bits

There ought to be a way to switch bodyguards mid-dungeon.

It was quick enough getting to the small hole and the treasure within it, but discovering the locked door along the way (unlockable with a "medium" bodyguard) was a little frustrating. Both chests were more rupee items, things you can collect to increase your net worth or some such. They're both now in my attic collection - a wooden fish and a set of golden shark teeth (which the game describes as a kind of shark bling).

All of the local specialty recipes I've found are now incredibly useful - you sell things like Lon Lon Ketchup to the merchant travelling with the stalfos pirates. As an added bonus, the guy gives you an empty bottle each time you bring him a new specialty. The elusive containers have never been so easy to find!

Starting in the Past

Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase starts off with disorientation.

We're dropped into the middle of events - but these events take place eight years before the events of the story proper. So, it's kind of like a prologue, but it isn't really announced as such. Because it doesn't give this clue it's easy to start into the story thinking that it's going to be about a guy who knew this potentially homeless, mysterious girl who would frequent coffee shops and whom he can only remember as "there was this girl who'd sleep with anyone" - though he goes on to note that she had standards. In the short short scene that she herself describes them it's pretty clear that she has them, but whatever they are remains with her.

After jumping ahead 8 years, it's revealed that the main character is recently divorced, though he meets a new woman by sheer chance. An ear model. Who's also a call girl and a part time proofreader. The scene where she reveals her ears in a full French restaurant reads like a terse description of something out of an anime. Yet, though the main character seems to not have an eye for detail, his similes and metaphors are, for the most part fantastic. Some of them, though, seem to get lost in translation.

Actually, I find myself reminded very much of 1Q84. We've got a 30-something, lost-in-life male protagonist, a mysterious female protagonist (?), and we see her tell him that he's only half living and that his lfie is not as boring as he believes it to be. Similarly we had Tengo and Aomame in Murakami's latest, though the role of the Goddess figure (to relate it all back to the Hero's Journey) in that one was played by Fuka-Eri.

Still, the wild sheep chase is just now about to start in earnest - so let's see where it leads!

Haggling with Gaming Ethics

Miscalculations have caught me up.

I never would have guessed that the stalfos pirates wouldn't allow a dog to enter their hideout (it *is* currently empty, after all), and neither would I have guessed that the game never allows you to get a new bodyguard of the same size as your current bodyguard. At least they're greatly cheaper than I had expected, having checked out some prices on this handy guide.

Is it cheating to look at a price guide in a game where haggling, figuring out prices, and checking what prices work are core mechanics?

It doesn't feel like it is, nor can it logically be called as such. So long as those cheats don't impinge on the enjoyment of the game, of course.

Besides, more important for completion's sake are the landmarks in the various areas, and so far I've found what I've found on my own. Areas being limited, and landmarks generally being those things in the scenery not automatically included in the map, it's generally pretty easy to find the landmarks you need to add to maps. Drawing circles around said landmarks can be touchy, however.

Although Junglo, the hero of the Deku Forest, currently looks well past his prime, I'm sure he'll pull a Master Roshi at some point and completely bulk up as some sort of bizarre power up. Of course, this is a Tingle game, so maybe it'll be more of a power down...

Some Quirks of Pre-1980s Nintendo

The History of Nintendo (Volume 1) is finished, and all I have to say is - what a ride.

Nintendo's history is certainly a fascinating one, though looked at in context, it makes sense that they wound up in video games. They also seem somehow quintessentially Japanese to me, after having read about their development.

I mean, it seems like the company tried everything. They hit it big with cards, and meandered into arcade games to fill Japan's empty bowling alleys and then checked out early home consoles that ran sets of games. They're like a character in a magical girl anime who's always re-inventing themselves.

What really surprised me, though, was just how strong a tent pole Disney was for the company. When their business was flagging on the card front, running off Disney themed hanafuda and Western playing cards worked - not because people loved playing cards that much, but because the Disney characters on them made them collectable. What's more, these close ties to Disney make later developments like the similarities between the Kokiri and the Lost Boys of Never Never Land all the more pronounced.

The fact that Nintendo was working with the electronics division of Mitsubishi when they were first making consoles is also pretty crazy. Though none of the pre-Famicom stuff looks that great.

For the most part they're just consoles that have x number of games built into their chips, most of which just being re-colours or very slightly modified versions of a single game (usually Pong, or a wall-breaker). That the Color TV Racing 112 console came with a steering wheel controller is pretty cool., though that bit of tech was a bit too far ahead.

The preview of the Game and Watch games, which are the focus of Part II was definitely a great thing to whet the appetite, but learning that Part II is entirely devoted to them makes me wonder how neat a read it'll be.

To break things up a little though, Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase is the next book for this blog. Watch for it!

Everybody's Favourite Ballin' Uncle

All right! The Tower's broken the 100m mark! Whoo!

But I'm still, only on the first continent. An area called the "Deku Forest" has opened up, in fact. So far it's Rosy Rupeeland's Lost Woods. Though, there's nothing lost to be found in the dirt patches, it seems. All I can find are single rupees. Ah well.

Uncle Rupee's last appearance was downright hilarious. Clothed in a white bathrobe, with a white cat in his lap, he sat in a room complete with gong and tiger skin rug. On his right was a man in a black suit with an earpiece.

However, after he made the cat wave farewell to Tingle we see it clawing his face - maybe the next meeting with him will reveal something shocking. It's almost certain that he's going to morph into some sort of final boss once Tingle's on the cusp of Rupeeland. He's just got to!

Yamauchi on Games

I really wonder just how bad Nintendo's instant rice was. They made it in the early 60s, and apparently even Yamauchi himself could not eat it. But really. just how bad could it be?

The company's forays into various avenues is really quite curious. And it spans the full gamut from toys to baby accessories, from food to porno (in so far as love hotels and a shooting gallery game involving shooting off a young Swedish woman's clothes count as pornography). But as soon as they found success with video games, it sounds like they really attached themselves to that.

The four characteristics of an excellent game, which Yamauchi himself quoted, being "competition, chance, imitation, and the pursuit of exhilaration " definitely come into play with all of the most popular video games.

But so what?

Well, I think that these four principles can be boiled down to just two - the thrill of an even competition wherein any player has a chance to win, and the placement of this experience into a setting that imitates life or is in some way relateable. This really applies to a lot of games of today, but what it doesn't apply to are many online shooters. Chance often seems stripped away from them in favour of experience, but really, how can you roll over a troop of experienced regular players to give new players a chance?

The book's quality continues to be on the side of trivia and factoids, while things like lacklustre grammar and improper editing saw a spike in the previous two chapters ("Other Products" and "Nintendo and Arcade Games").

On the whole, the book's strength is definitely not in its verbal presentation, but really, that's to be expected. Neither of the book's authors are native speakers of English, and as many ties as the English and French languages have, translating between even them can be perilous. Still, the errors aren't debilitating and the book's still a fascinating read - even as its end looms ahead.

Ketchup...Catsup...

The danger of being stumped has been entirely averted.

Having completely forgotten what the gent in the sun hat near Lon Lon Meadow's start point says, talking to him again lead to getting a red x on my map. And that red x lead to Missy's lost glasses. So they were returned, she went back to town, and her father dug deep to thank me. 4,000 rupees is a tidy sum indeed, but the seven digits on the game's rupee counter makes me think that soon enough that will seem like chump change.

I'm still on the first continent after all. There are four in all, if I recall.

The other thing picked up from Lon Lon Meadow was more mushrooms. Amongst them I also grabbed a rather mushroom-like bodyguard named Zuzu. Definitely not the greatest of helps, but he looks small enough to fit through a hole in the stalfos pirates' dungeon.

With the actual mushrooms, I was able to make two bottles of Lon Lon Ketchup! But. No one in town is buying it. Perhaps the gent who had the recipe but then lost it to one of his cow's appetite will buy it. At least, so it can be hoped. Otherwise, there's got to be another use for it - and hopefully not one that's half a game away.

On the Hunt

Nintendo's electronic toys really show off Gunpei Yokoi's tenacity and original thinking. Yokoi is the brain behind Nintendo's optoelectronic gun, the Ultra Hand, and the Game & Watch. I credit him with tenacity and original thinking because it seems that time and again some post war restriction or other forced Nintendo to add a twist to their product. Like with the Chiritorie, a robotic vacuum that could only go straight - but spun around indefinitely to go in any direction, if Yokoi was limited to using just one frequency, that's what he went with and it was ingeniously used.

Now, of course the optoelectronic guns are an important precursor of what Nintendo would create later on (some 12 years later!), but what I'm calling the original Duck Hunt was actually first a target set for the gun.

Nintendo's optoelectronic guns sold with a small number of different targets, many of which could also be bought separately. Duck Hunt was one of these target games, but it was the most advanced form of the toy. Rather than shooting at a plastic figure or object, Duck Hunt had players use a projector to produce the image of a flying duck on a wall. Since the gun reacts to light sources, it could be fired up to 4 meters away from the target.

Everything else might have helped Nintendo to get a grasp of what game consumers wanted well before they got into the video game biz, but Duck Hunt is definitely a true difference maker.

What does this Button do?

The Oinkers have been ousted! All two of them. Though the battle mechanic proved a bit clumsy. At least 30 rupees wasn't lost whenever Zonma, my bodyguard was charged. But the basic concept was simple enough. Let them see you, charge, and then guide them into a wall. Once the Oinkers're seeing stars attack as usual. But their lair is a very confined space, and there's not a lot of wiggle room if your bodyguard's bigger than the "small" size. All the same, they fell like a house of cards in the end (glued edges notwithstanding).

And for my troubles, I found a shiny golden button, just like the one the guard described. 3000 rupees later, and I'm starting to feel like the game's going to get easier. Well, less grind-intensive, anyway.

Having dug up some "Shoddy Knife" items in the Oinkers' lair also helped foster this optimistic feeling, I discovered that you don't sell them to the armourer in town, but haggle for a sell price. 185 rupees was the highest I went, but 200 is probably the upper limit.

Raking in the rupees like this has made it possible to think about getting a smaller bodyguard to get something missed in one of the dungeons, but now that the Oinkers are defeated, it seems the jeweller's daughter just lost her glasses. No doubt a cow ate them, but we'll find out soon enough.

Unless I'm on the verge of being stumped.

Coasting Rabbits

So the History of Nintendo does get better with its typos, and certainly nothing of the calibur of that first entry has shown up. Yet.

Anyway, as someone who's at least got some background knowledge of Nintendo's consoles and video games over the years (I've been playing video games since I was 4, after all), seeing and reading about their toys has been pretty amazing.

Curiously their biggest success - the Ultra Hand - has just had some cameo appearances in a few minigames sold mostly via Club Nintendo [confirm/check availability]. Yet, another of their great works, the Rabbit Coaster, where a bunch of little weighted bags are raced down a set track, has seen a little more exposure in mainstream games. Let me go out on a limb here.

Mario Party 1 and 2 and Nintendo Land feature slot car racing minigames. As far as this book has explained, Nintendo never released their own slot cars (unless they did so after 1980...), and so I'm going to go ahead and guess that modern slot car minigames in Nintendo games are call backs to one of their greatest hit toys - the Rabbit Coaster.

In general though, it seems like Nintendo rehashed a lot of its old ideas when they got into making video games. Or, at the least, all of their experience with toys and the like prepared them to simply walk into the console business.

I mean, from the range of games and the like that they had - almost all of which were released in "mini" travel-sized versions, I might add (hello stone age Game Boy predecessors) - they definitely would have had a strong sense of how interactive entertainment could best be pulled off.

Earning Bones

The dog that you befriend at Sunshine Seashore might just be running some sort of underground bone market. After meeting the pup and leading it to the stalfos pirates it becomes attached to Tingle, follows him home, and then promptly transforms into a Tingle-like outfit, changing its name to Barkle.

Anyway, for the most part, Barkle's purpose sitting in Tingle's house seemed to be rather mysterious.

You can "sell" him bones for nothing, and I'd done that a few times. I must have reached some sort of goal, though, since after selling him bones in my latest session he left the house and then came back with 76 rupees. Hopefully the enemies that drop bones don't stop doing so, since there might be a bit o' profit in them aside from making Tingly and selling it to the town's guard.

Otherwise, the game's taken a detour into treasure hunting. Sharp Shells and Ancient Coins are starting to fill out my inventory, and I'm left wondering what I'll be able to get for them. Once I get the Big Pot, I'll be able to cook way more. Amidst all of these side-developments, though, the game's story has got to be returned to.

Those Oinkers won't oust themselves.

A Book truly "unique for tits time"

This week's book is The History of Nintendo (Volume 1) by Florent Gorges (in collaboration with Isao Yamazaki).

As a big fan of trivia and history in general, I'm enjoying it thus far. Already, some of the things it reveals have been informative and helped to fill in the blanks and explanations for Nintendo's current practices. Specifically, Yamauchi's being quoted as saying that price point is more important than being on the technological cutting edge (in reference to the Custom series of Optoelectronic SP guns (think the NES Zapper, but from nearly 20 years earlier).

Plus, the few pages spent on establishing the historical context of hanafuda cards from which Nintendo was born is very quickly done and quite a dense read. It doesn't go into great historical detail, but still. It's a good overview.

The book's written in a style that just flows from the page. I came into it expecting it to be a quick read, and so far it's been just that. However, that quote in this entry's title is from the book's early pages, and though there hasn't been a goof of equal or greater substance yet, the text's having been translated from the original French is quite obvious on a regular basis.

Standard English rules are broken, idioms are misused, and apostrophes are missing or misplaced where they have quite a bit of power over meaning. With all that said, it reminds me of speaking in English with some of my students and mid-level adult speakers while working in South Korea. If you're a big stickler for grammatical and idiomatic correctness, then you'll probably be too distracted to enjoy the anecdote-driven history that the book offers.

Personally, I find the errors grating, but they don't make the book unreadable nor do they completely obscure meaning, so it's all right. In fact, it's kind of a curious way that the charm of Japan is captured in the book.

Building Bridges

The pace of the game is speeding up now, thanks to a little price guide (over at Strategy Wiki). I'll use it sparingly, but the elation that comes with finding some new recipes was too much to hold me back from using it.

So, my bodyguard died and I revived her with a quick shot of 750 rupees. Probably too much, but with the shovel, and a perfume that sells for 110 rupees or attracts enemies, it seems the game is getting easier. Plus, Duke's bridge fixing always brings a delighted grin to my face. Here's just what I'm talking about:

Anyway, having completed a fair amount of side stuff - including getting a new bottle - it's time to finally get back to Lon Lon Meadow and see what the so-called oinkers are up to. With the oinker snout I got from the town's answer to The Goonies' Chunk, I'm sure I'll be able to sneak past their lines and save the jeweller's daughter without difficulty.

At the Path's End

Well, what a denouement Neuropath has.

After the big twist that all of the book's blurbs promised we get a solid 60 pages of falling action that lead to an ending that isn't entirely what you'd expect. At least from a narrative standpoint. Sort of.

For, you see, in those pages upon pages of denouement we learn all about the intricacies of the creation of neuropaths and what is necessary for them to come about. And we get some of Bakker's more stripped down writing. His writing style is particularly on display in those parts where he attempts to describe things outside of normal experience.

Other writers might just not bother trying to describe these things in concrete ways, opting instead for the abstract and the absurd, but Bakker instead describes such things as the breakdown and alteration of perception in basic terms. This approach works, but it makes for a clinical explanation of something truly tremendous.

Though, that *is* the purpose of the book.

A phrase that keeps coming up in the book's end sequence is "the brain observing itself" and being able to get past the concept of the "mind." Although outside of regular experience it's possible that Bakker is suggesting that just that sort of a clinical perspective is the one that a brain aware of itself for what it truly is would take up. In that way his descriptions in this section of the book work, but otherwise concretizing the abstract is what I expect from Bakker, and he certainly delivers, but the ending as a whole left me wanting more.

When it comes down to it everything's too neatly tied up. It has the same impact as the ending of 1984 - hell, maybe that's just it. maybe they have the same kind of ending where the terror of the climax's trauma is so great that it taints the denouement's release of the reader's interests in the world of the book and leaves them with heavy things to think on.

So it works, but I wonder if it's maybe not a little out of place, I mean, all of the neurological stuff was neat, and the Chiropractor reveal was somewhat surprising too, but I think my biggest problem is that the book runs about 60 pages too long.

Aside from releasing Thomas, Nora, Ripley, and Frankie back into the world with a brand new perspective, the end of the book just doesn't accomplish much plot-wise. And when it comes to the endings of books that's generally what's focussed on.

Everyday I'm Shovellin'

At last! The shovel! It took some doing, since the price was higher than expected, but I finally managed to buy the shovel. The game hasn't fallen apart because of it, but at long last, new avenues to treasure have opened up for me. And it seems that secluded patches of bare earth open into holes a la the bomb/song holes in Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask. So the game has stretched itself before me just a little more.

However, as progress is made, it seems that some things are getting harder to find.

Fighting the flying, sleeping, rooting pigs just outside of Tingle's house used to yield quite a bit of the item "Minced Meat." Now, though, they drop rupees much more often. Maybe it's just the game's way of making it difficult to heal up my ailing bodyguard, the same way that some of the old Zelda games only give you hearts in abundance when you least need them.

Of course, it might also be the game saying that the most basic of healing potions is no longer as necessary as it once was.

Indeed, maybe the "Simple Juice" will prove more effective than mere "Tingly."

Oh, and regarding the question of where this game fits into the Zelda timeline/universe, in Lon Lon Meadow there's a guy who looks a lot like Ingo. He's been in Ocarina of Time as a farmhand, so there's still a strong case for Tingle's game occuring somewhere around there.

Perhaps, since this is the adventure he goes on before Tingle's looking for a fairy (as he and Link are in Majora's Mask), this game takes place in tandem with Ocarina of Time. Perhaps.

What a Twist!

Well, I totally called it. "The seed is strong," indeed.

Frankie is Neil's son, not Thomas'. However, that's not the book's twist that all the blurbs rave about. That twist is indeed a twisty twist of unexpected proportions. Someone even closer to Thomas than Neil turns out to be the true villain.

However, looking back this reveal doesn't make much sense. I mean, it turns out that Thomas indeed was the target of all of the neurological attacks, but I can't really say (or see) why exactly. For all it matters it could have been anyone who was targeted, and his being a psychology professor was more of a danger to his attackers only when they attacked, otherwise it was hardly a liability. So I feel like the motivation for the villains is lacking, but still. With another 80 pages to go, I could still find a satisfactory motivation.

Also, this is the chapter where the title finally gets mentioned! We find out just what a neuropath is, and it's totally whacked stuff.

Rather curiously, though, the idea of a neuropath, a term that refers to anyone who's had their brain re-wired, reminds me of the homunculi from the anime Full Metal Alchemist.

In this series the homunculi are beings created from attempts to resurrect the dead, and as such are just shells of people. A major part of the series' big plot arc is these beings' struggle to gain human souls and thus to become fully human. I think the connection between them and neuropaths comes up for me, because of some deep-seated idea that the human soul is the totality of a natural brain - to take bits away or to switch bits about somehow removes the soul.

The Where and When?

At long last -- the shovel is within my reach! But, not using a guide, I low-balled Duke the pelvic-thrusting construction worker, and wound up shovel-less. For now.

Of course, such a situation could only arise in a game like Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland (or maybe Captain Rainbow). What's really curious about this game, once you get past the construction worker obviously inspired by the Village People, is that the enemies you face can be weird mash-ups. In Lon Lon Meadow, for instance, there are cows that have grey alien-looking heads on them. And where there are mushrooms that take root when you look at them and become nothing more than toadstools.

At any rate, the reference to Lon Lon Ranch is a good sign, though, since it's still just a meadow, could this game be placed before Hyrule is as advanced as it is in Ocarina of Time? Or, since it stars Tingle, is this game taking place in Termina?

Hopefully by the game's end such questions can be answered, or, at the least, the game can be placed on the Zelda timeline. That could be truly wild.

Motivated Reading

So, I've recently been reminded why why I was a bit hesitant about Neuropath when still early into it.

Bakker's pared down style is great and his characters are decent enough, but he doesn't play fair with his information.

In what was read for this entry Thomas figures out Neil's true motive based on a chain of thoughts and events that start with his realization that he is connected to all of the people that Neil has kidnapped. He voted for the congressman, he protested against the businessman, he argued with Nora about a book by the preacher, he had the porn star in his psychology intro course. And, of course, Frankie is his son (so far it seems that yesterday's entry will be off the mark with my speculation about that).

All of this is fine and dandy, but Bakker doesn't dole out these connections throughout the book. Instead he has him come across the connection to Cynthia Powski (the porn star) and then tells us about the other connections outright. Because this is a major thing, and part of the fun of a thriller is trying to work things out for yourself, Bakker effectively shuts us down on that front.

Keeping this information in Thomas' head up to this point while having him boldly think that he had been batting around the other connections, but Powski cemented it as fact, is not a good way to engage readers in your story. However, I've kept on reading because of my curiousity about the Argument, and, particularly over a few pages after this connection was made, wondering "so what?" - what's Neil's real motive?

Well.

That question at least finally got answered in this section.

Neil is doing all of these things and showing them to Thomas because, at least so far as Thomas thinks, he's trying to overcome his own shame - the shame he feels for being in love with Thomas.

If this is the twist, then it's pretty twisty, but definitely not as grandiose as I had expected from the book's blurbs. Bakker does a fine job of explaining why and how Neil's shame would work as a motive, though.

Still, Tom and Sam are now about to confront Neil, and the next bit of the book will indeed be the conclusion.