Author Archives: Franklin Raines

Dungeon Dice Monsters’ Rogues Gallery of Yu-Gi-Oh! Manga Villains

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After debuting within Weekly Shonen Jump, Kazuki Takahashi’s original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga would quickly receive Konami-developed videogames. The games in question areYu-Gi-Oh! Monster Capsule: Breed and Battle for the original PlayStation and Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters for the original Game Boy in 1998, only two years after the manga’s 1996 start. It seems fitting that a manga so focused on games would lend itself to videogames, especially during the early parts of the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga where children’s toys were often platforms for dangerous Shadow Games. The US would not see a Yu-Gi-Oh! game until the 2002 Game Boy Color release of Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories (the far less interesting title of the original Japanese second game in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters series, instead of using the metal-as-hell Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters III: Tri-Holy God Advent title). While that was a continuation of Yu-Gi-Oh’s long tradition of video games based off the card game, a more interesting game arrived in 2003. Yu-Gi-Oh! Dungeon Dice Monsters, based off a mini-arc, showcased heroes, school friends, and villains from an almost-secret segment of Yu-Gi-Oh!, and those villains in particular deserve some attention.

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Based on this tile layout, this match is going to take a while.

Having started reading Viz’s English magazine of Shonen Jump by the time Yu-Gi-Oh! Dungeon Dice Monsters was released, I was already familiar and surprised with the manga’s schoolyard violence. Ha ha, no, I was actually more surprised by how horny manga Joey (Jonouchi) and Triston (Honda) were (potentially throwbacks to Tooru Fujisawa’s Great Teacher Onizuka’s prequel Shonan Junai Gumi manga and its delinquent leads Eikichi Onizuka and Ryuji Danma), and how no one would stop harassing Téa (Mazaki). This era of the manga is often known for Yami Yugi’s (Atem/ Dark Yugi) screwed up Shadow Games and penalties. From getting a high school hall monitor to stab himself in the hand or blowing up an okonomiyaki chief with an ice hockey puck containing an explosive chemical, Yu-Gi-Oh! was more Kakegurui or As The God’s Will than children’s card game.

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Silent Hill and the Stationary Terror

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This article contains potential spoilers for both Silent Hill 3 and Silent Hill 4: The Room. Also, a ton of gross gnarly images. You reader have been warned.

I want to talk about this…thing.

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A child’s fairy tale simply calls it “The Glutton”, this more-object-than-monster works as a puzzle boss in Silent Hill 3. Described on the Silent Hill wiki as “ While it is a major obstacle in Heather Mason’s escape from the Otherworld Hilltop Center, it doesn’t pose a legitimate threat to her”. Heather Mason’s long journey home to her father Harry Mason is no longer restricted by rabid dogs or a giant worm, but something closer in shape and size to a large refrigerator. Glutton is terrifying. This might come off as glib and a little obvious when discussing a Silent Hill monster, a world rife with no limit of messed up antagonists made of broken limbs and melted flesh. But Glutton is uniquely scary, especially since it can never actually hurt Heather (or simply, the player).

Glutton’s home, is the Hilltop Center, the Otherworld version of Silent Hill 3’s most mundane location. This “scary” small business location (Japan’s big building answer to an office park) is too poorly lit to fully see Glutton’s collection of shapes and jerky motions. Simply put, it’s a circular cage with either skin or metal slats draped over a sharp mouth-shaped front. Inside it looks like a twisted body, with noticeable dangling feet and a torso. The worst part though are Glutton’s two screw top heads, which unnaturally twist in unsynchronized movements. The kicker is that if the puzzle is done correctly the first time or with a walkthrough, Glutton only needs to be seen once, if at all. In other words, it’s one final messed-up speed bump before reaching home.

Glutton

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Sweet Pool Review: Pool Runnings

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This review contains both extensive discussion on the topic of sexual assault as it relates to both plot progression, character interaction and an untypical increase in profanity for this writer. If such topics are considered unpleasant, please consider sitting this one out, dear reader.

I have a love/hate relationship with visual novels, and while I have a ton of games I like, visual novels as a whole can leave me lacking. Visual novels as a medium have this cool way of letting the player reside inside the characters’ heads and shared experiences. But they often feel narratively padded or suffer, as I like to call it, Otome game cover boy syndrome, a pushed canon relationship. In other words, any visual novel with a dating factor really has a steep hill to climb with me. That hill is even steeper when it comes to the relationships in Nitro+chiral’s Sweet Pool.

High school second year Youji Sakiyama has spent years in and out of the hospital. He doesn’t eat much, has a sleep problem, and if it wasn’t for the fact that all the character designs make every character marble white, Youji’s also looking awfully pale. Plot summaries in visual novel reviews feel like giving boss tips in the middle of a review of a character-action game, so I will keep it brief with things aren’t going great for Youji in his super Christian Japanese high school besides is failing health. Youji’s currently lives alone in an apartment he use to share with his adult sister, because his parents are dead because plot. This provides appeal alone/kidnap time with Youji’s lovely classmates/love interests: wholesome hungry boy Makoto Mita, quite to a genuinely annoying fault Tetsuo Shironuma, and beer can licker and shit head son of a Yakuza Zenya Okinaga. What fun merriment will befall these boys?

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Really strange how this game got the license to play Duran Duran’s Hungry like the Wolf just for this burger shop scene.

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Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Unlockable Costumes

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Recently I’ve been trying to return to my childhood years of early Yu–Gi-Oh! videogames. Mixing nostalgia for the only trading card game I ever really got into and a desire to play a handheld game that was not another RPG, I recently played through both Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Tag Battle for the PSP and Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Spirit Caller on the DS. While I grew tired of Tag Battle’s Persona-style dating sim mechanics wherein I fed weird sandwiches to the high school cast of Yu-Gi-Oh GX’s duel academy, I did complete Spirit Caller.

Spirit Caller’s big draw for me was the character customization, which was mostly a superfluous addition to the game that would allow me to dress up my hapless Slifer Red duelist child prodigy into someone the rest of the campus respected. In Spirit Caller, the player can unlock different outfits and duel disks after winning against certain characters. An early example is beating old Ra Yellow dorm Professor Satyr; I had to beat his easy Japanese curry-themed deck over thirty times before he gave up his Ra Yellow student uniform. Yes, I was going to have to work overtime, dueling these other characters dozens of times for something as basic as a cosmetic addition to a player character I was expected to stare at for a rather long game. My Obelisk Blue dreams died that day.

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I wanted to beat high school boys and girls, and their professors, at a card game, in that jacket sooooo badly.

What is the point of burying unlockable costumes? Similar to my old video game room article, unlockable costumes are one of my favorite non-essential aspects of videogames. Costumes are the sole reason I played the job class-focused Final Fantasy X-2 with its dresspheres, where in the Gullwings’ Yuna, Rikku, and Pain all got their own version of the Dark Knight armor. They are often a selling point when it comes to longer games.

Many games like to put unlockable costumes on the same level as a secret bonus dungeon or optional boss. In other words, a prize to be given to players who either play though the game multiple times or seek out pure difficulty. Sometimes, costume changes are even restricted to the post-game, a no-man’s land for lots of players such as myself.

Take, for instance, survival horror games like Silent Hill 3 and the early Resident Evil games. SH3 restricts all of Heather Mason’s amazing outfits, which range from 2003-era video game websites and magazine t-shirts, a magical girl costume and the superior god of thunder outfit, to the post-game. Nonetheless, SH3 makes the costumes easy to unlock. On top of that, SH3 is also a short game with new-game plus weapons like the doorknob saber, and multiple endings which gives the player opportunities and incentives to wear the new outfits.

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Best character costume in a videogame. I do not make the rules, I just enforce them.

This is not so with RE and its hidden costume rooms. These cheeky secret rooms are only available to players who have at least beaten the game on normal. I love the RE series to death, but I am pretty bad at the games. I got through RE2 and 3 because of easy mode and infinite ammo but couldn’t beat Code Veronica due to its lack of easy mode. I understand that, back then, especially with the original RE, costumes were rewards for players who found value in beating the game multiple times on higher difficulties. But to me, was the infinite rocket launcher not a good enough reward for skilled players that snowboarder Chris Redfield also had to be bundled together?

A rather glaring example combing both Spirit Caller’s obtuse busy work with RE’s difficulty costume rooms would be One Piece Unlimited Adventure on the Wii. I really enjoyed Unlimited Adventure’s little details and design nuances (for instance, how multi hand Devil Fruit user Robin will sprout extra arms to reel in a fish) in a game that combined low-level item crafting (before it became bog standard in every early-access indie game) with Metroid-style adventure game exploration. Unlimited Adventure was a game that kept trying my patience when item crafting was an important part of providing certain Straw Hat Pirates with their best weapons and special attacks. However, when it came to costumes, Unlimited Adventure lost me entirely. To be given the “privilege” to even make new costumes, I would have to unlock and beat optional boss Mr. 2 Bon Clay (or Mr. 2 Bon Kurei for you scanlation kids), then dig up a treasure chest located in the final dungeon, build an actual costume/dressing room in the crew’s camp site, and finally craft each costume character by character.

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At least Mr. 2 Bon Clay’s disguise based Clone-Clone Devi Fruit power is thematically appropriate for different costumes. Not like the changing room had to be unlocked by beating undercover criminal Princess Vivi…wait a minute!

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A Child Killer and Soccer Tournaments

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I’m re-purposing this long post I put on Tumblr years ago, as the only thing anyone reads on Tumblr longer than three paragraphs involves a combination of “fan” and “fiction” and “not putting the rest of the mountain of text behind a ‘read further’ button”.

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This is a picture of Gilles de Rais, a 15th century French knight that fought along side Joan of Arc, but became truly infamous after he was executed after being convicted of murdering hundreds of children. Gilles de Rais was also almost certainly a child rapist, which makes this next fact all the more crazy.

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This is another picture of Gilles de Rais, but as he is portrayed in the soccer anime and DS and 3DS games, Inazuma Eleven. Rais is a playable character found in Inazuma Eleven GO 2: Chrono Stone.

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Giles is somehow present because for some random plot reason, Inazuma Eleven’s protagonist Tenma gets sent back via time-machine to what I guess Japan thinks qualifies as medieval France.

Before discovering this, I only recognized Inazuma Eleven as that kid’s hand held soccer RPG video game series that instills the “kid” part by pulling that stunt where two completely different versions are released, like with Megaman Battle Network, Pokemon, and Yokai Watch.

Case in point:

Neppuu Version

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Raimei Version

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Now I can only recognize Inazuma Eleven as that hand held soccer RPG where you can play as a 15th century child killer who not only competes against kids at inter-mural sports, but as a level 99 midfielder that uses the element of Earth.

Honestly, I couldn’t imagine anything more amazing if I tried.

Conception II – Children of the Seven Stars Review: Indecision is Best Girl

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When I initially reviewed Acquire’s Class of Heroes 2, I did a personal check of the high school dungeon crawler to see if it marked every check box on a special list. That list is called the “Francisco Fuentes Big Three”, otherwise known as a set of perimeters or elements a game is to contain to be a considered a Francisco Fuentes game. First is the setting, which has to be set in an anime high school. I’m not talking about your Project A-ko style anime high school with their gangs and mech unit fights, but one with dates and class representative meetings. Second is a usually fantasy (but science fiction can also work) world where everyone name drops specific proper-nouns and terminology and expects the player to keep up. Third is the biggest deal breaker, which is a heavy injection of boys’ romance perversion (think panty flashes and jiggling breasts). Thankfully Class of Heroes 2 well short on the third check box, but unfortunately Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars strikes that final square with gleeful abandon.

Developed by Spike Chunsoft, Conception II   has you playing in a fictional-fantasy world,  as the gray-haired male youth Wake Archus (you get to pick his name, but Wake seems to be the canon name), a recent transfer to an island combat academy. Each student at the academy is called a disciple, as they all share a uniform symbol on their hands called the Brand of the Star God, a mark said to have been bestowed by their god as a means to fight alien creatures that appeared decades ago. Wake learns that he is the fictional religion’s God’s Gift (a title who’s subtlety will quickly appear more Gallagher’s sledgehammer then soft messiah), a forespoken figure whose huge magical energy count allows them to successfully travel through the otherwise hazardous home of the monsters, called labyrinths.

The red-head is named Clotz, the game’s constant reminder that his life sucks simply because you are the cherished protagonist and not him.

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The Sky Crawlers – Innocent Aces Review: Happy Hunting!

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I personally have little experience when it comes to the hundreds of hard-core-as-hell plane combat games. I grew up during a time many years after the era where vertical shooters and shmups like Gun Nac and The Guardian Legend were as common to video games as platformers. I’ve had my rare outings: be they a quick run through an Area 88 arcade cabinet at a local con, to the semi-realistic pilot simulators once showcased at the East Dallas Science Place (imagine a science museum, but bigger), to early memories of either Star Wars X-Wing or Tie Fighter my dad once owned, with a full-motion pilot joystick and everything, that we could never seem to run on our family desktop.

But what about any of the Star Fox games you may ask? Let the record state that the only Star Fox games I like are the ones where flight combat is shared with either the puzzles and adventuring of Star Fox Adventures or the time Nintendo tried to make a Halo-esk console multiplayer FPS of Star Fox Assault. Thankfully, my odd pedigree with dog-fitting didn’t stop me from checking out The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces on the Wii.

The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces was made by Access Games, the same developer who credits include the equally odd-ball pair Deadly Premonitions and this year’s Drakengard 3. I have some familiarity with the Skycrawlers’ name from being a fan of director Mamoru Oshii’s film adaption of Hiroshi Mori’s novels. I immediately put Innocent Aces in the same tie-in boat as the two Eureka Seven PS2 games, The New Wave and The New Vision. A nice form of reassurance that Innocent Aces’ might have been trying to shoot  higher than the average Anime tie-in game came when I read that Oshii and Mori were personally involved in Innocent Aces’ production. This way, Innocent Aces can be seen as a hybrid of Mori’s source material and Oshii’s experience adapting Mori’s source material.

Looking at the reverse cover like this makes me wonder. Does being a Veteran pilot just make you tan or am I missing something?

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Interior Decorating In Videogames Never Looked So Compulsive

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I want to start this article by doing something out of the ordinary for me, which is discussing current video game news. When news of the 3DS remake of the 3rd Generation Pokemon games Ruby and Sapphire dropped, the first thing my friends and I got excited about was what the secret bases would look like running off  Pokemon X and Y’s visuals. A refresher for those of you reading who skipped those Hoenn adventures of which I feel are the second weakest of the Pokemon Gens (after Gen Four if we are only counting non-remakes, because Heart Gold and Soul Silver were fantastic). Hoenn’s secret bases were located in trees, bushes, and sides of mountains where a player with a Pokémon who knew the move Secret Power could access large hidden rooms.

The only real draw the secret bases had were that they could be decorated with various furnishing like cushions and desks made of leaves to trinkets like Pokémon plush and ornaments like breakable doors, tents, and slides. This has me thinking about how, in general, getting a house or base to interior decorate is one of my favorite added parts in video games (up there with character customization like outfits and hair styles).

You can tell that this is a fan mod image because it was impossible to walk across those ditches. Let alone transport all that plush.

Some games make the player’s base or house an integral part of game progression and the Lost In Blue games on the DS are the first to come to mind.

The Lost In Blue games were spiritual successors to the Game Boy Color series Survival Kids, where the player controls a young kid who ends up as a castaway on a deserted tropical island. The first Lost In Blue was an early DS game for me back around 2006, a bygone time where you could actually find a reasonable copy of Trace Memory. While the original first Survival Kids fostered you with late 90’s card-battle anime protagonists Ken and Mery and their mascot ready pet monkey, the first Lost In Blue assigns you the serious young man Keith and the near-sighted quiet young woman Skye. The goal, learn to live off the land and build a way off the island. Every day has you controlling Keith in finding food and water for the pair, as Skye stays in the cave and preps food.

The cave base as a core concept is great, as building new beds and better fireplaces not only spiffs up the joint, but also either makes the daily progress easier or helps restore Keith and Skye’s stamina and overall well-being. You even get to decorate the place with a nifty barrel so that you can keep water inside so these two young youth don’t die of thirst.

I know I rap poetic about Harvest Moon a little too much on this site (less than the average super fans of the series, but more than the average sane person), but no Harvest Moon game ties game progression as heavily to how big your farm house is as much as Harvest Moon: Back to Nature on the Play Station.

Ah the life of a bachelor. A time where you don't care about the random liquor bottles by the entrance or if you have enough shelves for your miscellaneous boxes.

Ah the life of a bachelor. A time where you don’t care about the random liquor bottles by the entrance or if you have enough shelves for your miscellaneous boxes.

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Franklin Raines’ FPS Tour of the Arts

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A common aspect of playing shooters is how you often visit a locale only once. No returning to the burned out house set-piece from two hours ago to revisit an NPC, as most shooters like to make every area a sequestered bubble. My experience with most shooters is that you are expected to only run down that hallway or back alley once, unless you happen to get shot dead before you hit the next checkpoint. Certain games like Resident Evil 4 (whose action hybrid approach to gun fights make it an odd duck in this example) would sometimes have you backtrack for puzzles, but once you crossed that bridge to Ramon Salazar‘s castle, there was no returning to those lovely Spanish households.

First Person Shooters specifically are a great example of a quick type of game where you are rarely expected to sit and smell the flowers. Some FPS developers do try to get their players to appreciate the atmosphere though.  A way that developers utilize in order to get the player to slow down their gun reloading is by simply placing detailed things on the wall. They know players like to speed through their campaigns, as FPSs lead themselves to quick gameplay. I decided that with all the late 90’s and early 2000’s FPSs I have been playing lately that I owed it to you readers to give you a tour of some of the better (or at least odder) art I’ve found at the end of my gun barrel. Let’s call it “Franklin Raines’ FPS Tour of the Arts”, at least until I can think of/patent something better.
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