Wanderer's Rest

because I'm probably the last person on Earth who still cares about this character. XD

( Spike Witwicky, Boy Genius )

I don’t remember picking up Pokémon Red, but it was probably at Walmart. Most of my games came from Walmart back then. Before Pokémon my Game Boy was something I picked up once in a while for a little Kirby Pinball or Mickey’s Ultimate Challenge*, but Red was the first game I could happily spend hours with. I brought the damn thing to high school with me and whipped it out at lunch and during Creative Writing class. I took shameless advantage of that Missingno glitch to build a beautiful L100 team. Eventually, despairing of ever catching ‘em all due to a regrettable lack of friends, I picked up a cheat device at a shady Japanese-merchandise store in the mall and cheated my way to that weird little certificate.

Pokémon Blue I picked up a year later, during a vacation with my cousin, a fellow video game enthusiast though he wasn’t a Pokémon freak. I got it with the express purpose of catching Mew, which I head heard through the grapevine was located under that truck at Vermillion Harbor. When I reached the truck, the cartridge glitched out and erased its own data completely. I probably still have that cartridge in storage somewhere, but it is, in its way, a vegetable.

Pokemon Yellow I never finished, because I loaned it to the twin brother of a guy I liked in junior year, and then the asshole moved away with his family without returning it to me.

All of this probably seems pretty depressing, but these are among my few happy memories of high school. I fucking love Pokémon and I always will.

So apparently Squenix decided not enough people were talking about VII-R and released a gameplay trailer. With the usual caveats that this is a work in progress and may be tweaked, I have a few thoughts:

- The combat appears to be roughly FFXII-style, as far as I can make out. Which is about what I expected, but still kind of disappointing. The combat in XII felt too clumsy and uncontrolled to me. Straight turn-based wouldn’t really fit with the rest of the design anymore, but at the very least I’m hoping it’ll play more like Kingdom Hearts than XII.
- The expanded dialogue sounds great. So does the voice acting. (Except for Wedge. Poor Wedge, what have they done to you?) …unfortunately the dubbing is pretty awful. That sort of thing usually doesn’t bother me, but it’s immersion-breaking in this trailer.
- Moving around the map appears to have more to it than hold-X-to-run, which is an improvement. And it’s bigger, or at least seems that way due to the new camera angle - hopefully this means more little corners to poke in and little details to discover.
- I am happy about the art. It still looks like Midgar.
- Cloud looks terrible. Like he really has just escaped from a lab. His arms are so skinny and there’s shadows under his eyes, the poor thing.
- I’m fairly sure we saw Barret’s Hot Shot - it looks awesome. And GUARD SCORPION. Holy crap, it’s terrifying.
- Why is Barret wearing sunglasses at night? So he can, so he can see the light that’s right before his eyes.

Overall I’m impressed, but I’m trying to sit on my enthusiasm. I’ve been hoping for this for years but now that it’s happening I feel kind of worried. I’ve come to the conclusion that I just don’t trust Squenix to be able to tell the difference between what needs updating & reworking and what should be preserved. FFVII was the game that got me hooked on RPGs, and I adore it glitches and bad dialogue and all, and a polished-up version is by necessity going to lose some of that. I’ve been kinda turned off to AAA console gaming for years now - the most recent console I own is a Wii - and if Squenix tries to make this thing fall into line with modern console games or even more modern FF games (I’m looking at you, XV), it’ll end up boring me. Or annoying me. Possibly both.

Also if I catch even a hint of Genesis, I am going to strangle someone.

(Think we’ll get some more WEAPONs to beat up? :D)

That's the 1986 version, the original and still the best. ;) I livetweeted the whole thing; you can read the collected tweets right here. :D

I have so many feels about this movie, you guys. SO MANY. I may have to do a Why I Love Hot Rod post sometime. XD Also my appreciation for a very, very pretty Galvatron has been reestablished. >3

....that popped into my head around bedtime and wouldn't let me sleep 'til I wrote them out, thanks ever so much brain.

( Anyway, here are my thoughts on femmes. )