My Favorite Desert

 August already almost done... gonna get an article done too.

This is not about my favorite Dessert like food like cakes and puddings and stuff like that. This is more like that question "if you were on a deserted island and could ONLY take one thing......." except in this case the question is more like if you were on a deserted island and could only take ONE desert... which one would you take.

I've narrowed it down to three finalist for My Favorite Desert:

1. The Desert of Doom (from 1995's Secret of Evermore)
2. The Desert of Death (from 1997's Breath of Fire III)
3. The Dusty Dunes Desert (from 1994's Earthbound)

First off, you know you have a good desert if you have to name it... same goes in real life... like we have some decent deserts in real life like the Gobi desert.

Since this is a quick-draw McGraw style entry to this blog, I'm gonna gimmick the length a bit by making a rating system to judge these respective video game deserts. The rating system is as so:

Vastness:
Desertness:
Feel:
Music:
Oasis (Oasii):
Danger:
Bad Guys:
Desert Denizens:

It's hard to really explain my reasonings for these categorizations to rank my Deserts but... what we can do? You know? Honestly, "Feel", is probably best-most described at its source as a blatant "personal bias" which just gives me some wiggle room to put my favoritist one over in the end of the article.

Alright let us begin with an honorable mention...

....the year was 199X... and I programmed one of the most amateur video games ever made called The Legend of Liberace 3 for PC. Within this game, I had a Desert, which was a culmination of all three Deserts mentioned above MELDED together into one SUPER DESERT. It is an honorable mention as greatest desert. To be fair... the main coolest part of the desert was how cool it looked and the credit for that goes to my cousin who took my "template maps" that had all the events, programming, writing, etc. on them and beautified said maps using his gifts of the artistic persuasion. So, yes, before we continue, the Desert, from The Legend of Liberace 3, which combined all three of the above deserts into a massive unwieldingly great Super Desert should be given a brief mention.

Alright, let us now begin our Desert review, shall we?

 

The Desert of Doom

Secret of Evermore is an under-rated game in general. I bet no one in Japan has even played SquareSoft Hawaii's American aimed RPG and if they did they would probably just scoff at it. Then again, maybe not, as Live A Live is a comedy/parody RPG in its own right that I feel is very under rated and that one was only released in Japan and not US of A.

I feel comedy/parody RPGs other than Earthbound are rare and not highly remembered. My very own The Legend of Liberace 3 a parody/comedy ode to the SNES era of RPGs is barely even remembered and seems totally lost to sands of time.

Let's talk 'bout Secret now, Secret's desert was no joke, man. In Secret of Evermore... you and your dog are separated after Fire Eyes's evil twin geeky sister blows up a volcano and jettisons you and your dog skyward into uncertainty. When you both wake up... you are in some violent viking town and your dog has transmogrified into a fantastically well-bred greyhound and is in a faraway castle. To re-unite yourself with your best friend, your doggie, you have to cross the longest desert anyone, to that date, ever put into a video game. 

This desert is no joke... and you know at the end of it is the town with that castle where your best friend is so you are not saving and coming back to it later... because... you miss your dog.... badly.

Bromide, some deserts 'aint even a joke, son. You take 5 units of damage every coupla seconds you spend in this dusty bad boy... and I have like 138 HPs in total, old friend... and those spiders and flying skulls? They do like 20 - 30 damage when they catch ya nappin' so you better have some petals or nectars ... or enough water and roots to cast Heal or you will not make it to the town and find your dog... you won't.

This desert doesn't end... and you start to think it's like a throw back to the NES days where you have to like go Left, Right, Left, Up to make it to the next screen (which to be frank was a dopey gimmick)... but no... this desert isn't gimmicked ... you have to keep walking upwards until you get to the end... and it NEVER ENDS.

This was the first desert that really made me put down the controller and turn inwardly to myself and wonder in the silence of my own mind..... "Is there an End?" not only to the desert but just in general? What if it's all a big game and there's no end to it!?

I'm gonna give its Vastness the highest possible rating because this is the only desert I can remember that truly felt endless and made me wonder if Life Itself was just a Great Big Cosmic Joke.

I can't say that Music is gonna fair well for Desert of Doom, it is like a Fallouty sorta windy wastelandy kind of ditty... and nothing to write home about. I see online many people remember the soundtrack of Secret of Evermore as being good... I don't think Evermore stood up to its Japanese counterparts in that regard where Final Fantasy had full orchestras making the battle songs. Evermore was more ambience than orchestra.

Vastness: 100
Desertness: 90
Feel: 75
Music: 55
Oasis (Oasii): 90
Danger: 100
Bad Guys: 70
Desert Denizens: 85

Overall: 83

Not bad for Desert of Doom... skeptics are gonna wonder why it lost so many points in so many categories and categorically disagree but I stand by the 55 in Music because it's just ambience and Fallouty and windy... nothing that really makes me say "Desert! Ya!" or anything to that extent. 

 

The denizens are cool. There's a skeleton boatman who can row a boat over the desert and for some trinket amulet he'll take you across. There's a secret Oasis where an alchemy man in greek-guy antiquity robes will teach you the bumble bee spell that's actually pretty good. All in all the very few people you can meet in the desert are chill but mostly it's monsters and the monsters aren't that great... it's palette-swapped spiders and flying zelda skull guys mostly. The low-end scores, especially for music, which is ambient background noise more than music, are justified, and anyone who believes otherwise is allowed to but should start to think if ambient noise is really the way to go in an RPG.

I think I put "Feel" down a bit for the greyhood of the desert... it's the Desert of Doom alright... it is gloomy. To me a desert is more yellow... you know? The barren grayness of the sand matches the barren ambience and the vast lostness of it all... yet even if you tie the whole scene together does it make it good? Sometimes a little contrast is needed, you know?

It's a good desert.

 

The Desert of Death

Breath of Fire III is a good game. Personally I rank the Breaths of these Fires as such:

1. Breath of Fire 2
2. Breath of Fire 3
3. Breath of Fire 1
4. Breath of Fire 4
5. Breath of Fire 1/4

I debated including Breath of Fire (Dragon's Quarter?) in this list as it killed the franchise dead on arrival. Murdered it. 

Breath of Fire 2 is truly one of my all-time favorite video games... and I'm a traditionalist who does NOT prefer the new-age mainstream or fan-made amateur translations of it. Breath of Fire 2 was MEANT to be played with the clunky, hokey, clanging, burgundy-boxed, purply-boxed, ridiculous translation that it had in 1994.

One of all time favorite scenes of writing in a video game comes from the meticulously poorly translated script of Breath of Fire 2... which the clunkiness and hokiness and complete almost slob-like clumsiness of the text just makes this scene so memorable. When Rand tries to sacrifice himself for the greater good of the party.... but then his mom shows up to take the self-sacrifice for him... the dialogue between Rand and Rand's Mom is the best. I love it. I love that scene.... and I bet in the re-translated versions it is not nearly as memorable as in the original translation. 

Forget Breath of Fire 2 though, we're talking about the desert of Breath of Fire 3... which used a gimmick that was becoming popular in Playstation RPGs of the time which was in 3D (which prior to the late nineties no RPGs were 3D)... in which it was hard to situate yourself if you rotated the screen... so their desert had a compass to some extent. There were stars in the sky and you knew you were walking north if you could see the North star... and thus you could only walk at night and slept throughout the day.

This isn't a desert, this is an Experience. This is probably how you cross a Gobi in real life, you know? Sleep all day and then walk at night when it's cooler and chiller... and you can see the north star so you have an internal compass in case you accidentally rotate the screen on yourself.

Yo, they pull that in Final Fantasy Seven too where like you are going through the snowy fields, and there's this tent in the middle that has another "All" materia, but they rotate the screen ON YOU! You have to situate yourself in FF7 with like orange colored poles.

I was a big Garr-head in this game, probably as a bleed-over from being a HUGE Rand-head in Breath of Fire 2. Garr is that big monster-dude sitting in the back of the tent near the sleeping bags in that photo north west of this paragraph. There's a part where Garr tries to murder you because he's the last of the Dragon Hunter Men and the lead character (you) is the Last Dragon Man... but I forgave him quick because he's a cool guy. Rei, the guy sharpening the knife is cool too, my party was mainly Three Men in this game, not because I'm a chauvinist (I was a big Nina-head in Breath of Fire 2, for example) but because Garr and Rei are cool in this game.

I want Evermore to win at least one category so I will rank the Vastness as 95 for Desert of Death... 

Vastness: 95
Desertness: 100
Feel: 90
Music: 90
Oasis (Oasii): 80
Danger: 100
Bad Guys: 85
Desert Denizens: 50

Overall: 87

Danger-wise, you have, if memory serves me right, like 16 portions of water in your flask, which can be filled at Oasii and if you drink too much and run out you will start getting damage as you walk... so the danger is there and I do remember Game Overing I think when I played this back in Le Day. 

I don't remember anyone living in this desert, but I could be mistaken here, I haven't re-played Three in a good dose of time, baba. I do not remember people living in this desert.

The bad guys are okay... like palette swap the green lizard mans for like golden lizard mans? That works. I like the attention to desert detail when you palette-swap the lizard mans like this. I dig it. Because if you fight those lizard mans in the forest, guess what? They are green those lizard mans.

Music wise? It already blasted a good thirty points ahead of Evermore here... they have wind ambience, which honestly is a given, and for Evermore to just use wind ambience as the SOLE music of their desert is sort of phoned-in and a bit low-class, yet to a minimalist they probably love Evermore's desert music. Me? I dig Three's more better. They start with wind ambience and build on it. They have some native drum beats... and not even like stereotypical like Arabic like Sheik of Araby stereotype stuff... like they got tribal drum beats going... like tom-tum-tam-beek.... yeah... like that... tom-tom-tum-ta-na-beek! I'm already digging it... and then they do a third layer on the ambient wind and the tribal taps.... they do a little geet-geet... just a little guitar... not too much... just enough to keep you from falling asleep as you walk through this desert for the next hour or two.

 

I had it at 80 the music... I'm going back up to adjust that to 90... I'm listening to it as I write right now... and I'm into it... my hands and words are flowing like a calm desert's night. Yo, there's better songs in Breath of Fire Three too.... I remember you go to this junk town where these junk men pull ancient junk out of the water on the coast and the theme to this town is full on and full out funky jazz. Not fake like funky jazz but like legit like professional ass stuff. I'm gonna search for junk town jazz and see if I can pull it up, baba.

They got pan flutes in this stuff... like full on fully out funky jazz with pan flutes... like it's very good the music in this game. There's one with funky splappin' bass in some junky town... and it's like... you walk into this town and are like "who lives in this town? Marcus Miller? Does he live here? Does Larry Graham live in this coastal junk town just fishing out wrecks and funk slappin' on his bass? What's with this great-ass music!?" I'm gonna try and find some nice Breath of Fire III numbers....

Atomic Power is okay, I don't think this is the one though....

Hmmm.... you want some Funky Ambience? Try some "These Little Things" ... that's not bad ... this number is speaking to me:

I can't find the funk that I'm thinkin' 'bout, bootsy baba. Maybe I will find it more later. The people at Over-Clocked remix did Breath of Fire 3 once, I remember, and they really brought out that funk which is present in these tracks.

As for people asking about the "90" for "Feel"... I just felt that this was a desert. That's all.

 

The Dusty Dunes Desert

You might already know that I like Earthbound. It is more than a video game... it is way more than that... it's bigger than that... and back in the day when people like Roger Ebert would say that video games could never be art... truthfully... they don't get it ... they don't. They just... don't GET it.

This song... 

The ambience to build on here in this song? It wasn't wind... there's something almost resembling wind but it's not wind... it wasn't like our first two entries. The ambience they used as layer-one of their building block was not wind... but.... the noise of trying to tune into a radio frequency somewhere along the Arizona and Mexico border and getting odd modulations of feedback from the changing geography and radio waves.

The tonal modulations are more normal to the human ear in modern travel then we care to even realize. This sound is more deserty than we'd like to admit. Does "wind" really make a good building block for desert ambience noise? In modern 2000s or even 1900s travel? No. Dissonant yet almost melodic modulations of foreign (yet not so foreign in a few minutes when you cross the border and the radio waves come in better) radio stations is much more normal to a modern human ear than wind. This is true ambience here. True modern ambience... that is then built upon with a wonky yet likeable synth melody. I like this song. Probably gonna give it like 95, man.

Vastness: 75
Desertness: 80
Feel: 100
Music: 95
Oasis (Oasii): 90
Danger: 85
Bad Guys: 85
Desert Denizens: 100

Overall: 88

Danger is there but you can buy Wet Towels in case you catch Sun Stroke so it's not that dangerous...

Denizens gets a smooth full 100 because you meet so many great people in this place. The miners who need you to beat the moles so they can find that diamond that let's you pay your favorite blues band's debts for a second time, the cave of monkeys who teach you how to teleport, the religious guru who tells you all the secrets of life (not joking, the Talah Rama really does do this), you can find Penetella Giovanni's contact lenses, bleached dead bones who will talk to you, sun bathers in bikinis, a monster who is this game's closest equivalent to metal slimes, a three man human mariachi-band/slot-machine, many gift-wrapped presents, a drugstore (all foreigners even in Europe are fascinated why America calls the place we buy shaving cream and stuff a "drug" store), an uncooth weapons trafficker, and of course a black and a white sesame seed.

Hey you, yeah you, I know you feel like a failure sometimes... but listen... if you repaired the broken hearts of these two long-lost-lovers, the black and white sesame seeds of the Dusty Dunes Desert... person... you are good. You are a good person.

You are.

If you cared enough to relay these broken hearted seeds's thoughts to each other from one end of the desert to the other... the empathy that exists in your most human of hearts is unquenchable. 

Through separation, isolation... these sesame seeds love still existed. They just needed you to be the messenger to relay this! I don't remember if Final Fantasy 6 came out before or after Earthbound but you can do something similar, albeit less totally purely great, in that game with the Mobliz letters.

Personally, I think Earthbound changed the genre of RPGs more than any other game. It did.

I gave the Feel a tight and fully deserved 100... because this desert? It FELT like a desert, YA!

A CHALLENGER APPEARS!!!!!

No, I'm sorry but this article is over, Earthbound won with an 88 defeating Breath of Fire III and The Secret of Evermore.... it's a closed book, the page is turned, okay?

The challenger is Mother One AKA Earthbound Zero? The pre-cursor and proto-version of Earthbound? Alright Mother One, I shall humor your challenge to be the best desert, plead you case.

So, you're telling me you can bypass this long-winding desert in your game? You can skip the desert, just like in Secret of Evermore... but not with a skeleton boatman but with a reckless bi-plane pilot with a cool theme song? Alright... alright... okay... let's negotiate here, Mother One, let's say this bi-plane-over-the-desert song is cool... which it probably isn't ... because I'm pretty confident it's not... but even if it is.... it's not enough to make me reconsider this entire article... but I'm a reasonable man, Mother One, so if your song is as good as you claim... I will henceforth renounce Earthbound as the winner and give you an automatic 90 Overall for your Desert. What is it? The Yucca Desert? Not a bad name. Oh ok, so, your theme song of the desert is the same one from Earthbound but without the very-good Mexican radio ambience in the background? Oh yeah? That's good? Pshaw, I say. That's not gonna win you any trophies, brother. What else you got going for you? I can step on a land mine which seems to be an instant game-over but then the creator of the game felt bad about doing this so wrote a personal apology to the player after you step on this desert land mine? That might win you some "Feel" points, Yucca desert. Yeah. So lemme get this straight, your bi-plane bypass theme song to fly over the desert is that good, huh? Pffft, I'll believe when I see it, Yucca Desert.... if that's even your REAL NAME!

Okay there big shot... let's hear your bi plane song if it's that good, my friend....

....

Oh.... okay. Yeah, I see what you mean. Damn, it's even short enough a song to be my new cell phone ring too. Imagine someone calls me on my cell phone and this comes on? I'd probably answer it in like 10 seconds. Mother One... this desert bypass bi-plane isn't a song... it's an ANTHEM!

I think I'm gonna listen to this on loop on youtube for the next hour! Okay... I give in Yucca Desert... you win. A promise is a promise, Yucca Desert. I just can't listen to this when I walk along the bike path though... my walk is liable to get too funky, Yucca desert.

Final Assessment 

Yucca Desert: 90
Dusty Dunes Desert: 88
Desert of Death: 87
Desert of Doom: 83

Congratulations to my dear friend, Yucca Desert, for their come-from-behind, or come-from-out-of-nowhere even, victory in this article about Deserts.

Over Descriptivism: Will it Lead to the Death of Fiction?

I read fiction rarely if ever. I mostly read words for the purpose of acquiring/disseminating datum, to learn about someone's life (auto-biographies) or comedic materials that are wicked funny. I can't wrap my head around fiction these days. Fiction, by the way, just means material that is make-believe for the intent purpose of entertaining readers (like adventure novels, mystery novels, romance novels, novels, les romans, etc.).

Is it just me? Am I weird? Probably, yeah.

Maybe I dislike fiction because I suck at it and can't write that way, it could be that. The only attempt I have ever made at fiction writing was an amateur computer game I made called "The Legend of Liberace 3," which even though I made it (with map editing help from my friend who edited my template maps into more better looking maps), I will admit it is possibly the shittiest thing ever. I dunno, me sucking at writing fiction can't be the reason I don't like readin' the stuff though. 

Maybe I gotta take a step back and figure out why I can't get down with fiction, I really should. I mean I used to read that shit back in the day. When I was a kid I used to read those Sesame Street books like where Grover is the monster at the end of the book, or where Ernie and Bert meet at the wrong lamp post at the park, and this and that. Those books used to rule but even they weren't really fiction, they were stories to teach kids lessons about life.

I used to read fiction books for school if they assigned us some or during "15 minute free readin' period" but that wasn't by choice. Like I read that Rebecca for school and wrote my mandatory 500 word essays on what a horrible woman Mrs. Danvers was but that wasn't by choice.

I've read really old fictional stories, like Gilgamesh or Outlaws of the Marsh,...but I'd classify that as historic research as much I'd classify it as fiction. It's so old that they really are a window into a past society's views and writing techniques.

I don't think I've really ever read pure fiction by choice, though I think I know what turns me off and it is the use of Over Descriptivism which is plaguing ALL writers in ALL languages on earth at this current moment.

Over Descriptivism

This is not in reference to "linguistic descriptivism" or "philosophic descriptivism" in any way, I'm really just talking about over description but am calling it by the term "Over Descriptivism" because it sounds chicer and cuter.

Describing things is the essence of writing...yet, at what frequency are writers (in this case ALL writers of fiction) over describing things? It seems like all the time and always.

Some writers take 2 pages just to introduce a character to you. How they look, how they look at a distance, how they smell, how they are currently feeling, how they know other characters in the book, how tall they are, how fat they are, how ugly/not-ugly they are, if they have tattoos...blah, blah, blah, blah, etc, etc,.

You build characters in fiction by making them do cool/respectful things (for good guys) and making them do horrible/bad/annoying things if they are villains. Let the imagination of the reader decide what they look like. If you leave your lead character ambiguous to the reader they can more easily give the characters the features (physical, etc.) they want him/her to have.

There's a very very fine line separating being descriptive of a scene or a character and just jotting down autistic nonsense. I almost couldn't read Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" (which is a highly acclaimed book) to the end because I didn't care what the fucking gas station you stopped at looked like, or what the truck you hitched a ride on looked like, or what Neil whats-his-name's hair smelled like, or how you felt when you walked into someone's house. blah blah blah, blah...

Sarcastically Emulating Standard Fiction Writing whilst Employing the Over-Use "Technique" of Describing Shit

In the following grouping of words and sentences, I will attempt to write a few paragraphs of standard fiction. Our lead character will walk into a room and scratch his head, then he will scratch his nutsack. Ahem...

Reggie was standing in the archway which led to the room he wished to walk into. He was a quaint man of regular to minute stature, many of his colleagues respected him yet he suspected they only respected him due to this modest stature he projected unto the world. He knew if he walked into this room he would have to do it in a manner which made the people already in that room feel that the man walking into the room was a man of average to great importance. He began to feel nervous, "what if they think I walk into rooms funny?" he thought to himself. The last thing Reggie wanted was to walk into the room in a manner which attracted ridicule. 

The archway over the doorway was quite beautiful, in more ways than one. The wooden curved facade was oaken yet had a golden plating which made the room he was standing before appear daunting to the person attempting to enter it. Doorways have a way of sneaking up on you both physically and mentally Reggie thought to himself. Life is full of so many archways leading to unknown rooms...will you enter a nice room full of nice experiences, or a horrible room full of horrid experiences? Reggie was making himself more nervous as each minute passed, he began to break out in a cold sweat, he grabbed his hair with his right hand and wiped up some of the sweat from his hair and his temple. In the process of wiping his sweat Reggie disheveled his hair which made him even more nervous. He wondered if the people in the room he was about to enter had seen him wipe his sweat and mess up his hair. 

"Oh no," thought Reggie, "did they see me? I better just walk in right now before they think I'm a big weirdo!"

Reggie, like ripping off a band-aid, walked briskly into the room before him. In the case that anyone saw him mess up his hair he pretended that his head was itchy and coolly and collectedly scratched the right side of his head. Reggie dislodged some white flakey dandruff from his scalp and it cascaded onto his shoulder and lapel. The feigned itchiness was now more real than ever and like a contagious disease his itchiness spread to his legs and crotch.

"My balls," Reggie pondered inwardly..."My balls are itchy now..."

Reggie had no choice now but to scratch his balls....

TO BE CONTINUED

Okie dokie, a couple of paragraphs describing a man walking into a room and scratchin' his nuts. Wasn't that interesting? No it wasn't, it was boring, stupid and utterly pointless.


Over Descriptivism is Spreading like a Virus

Forget just in fiction novels, OD is spreading like a freakin' swine flu to every form of writing. I read an article today on the net which was at the point of being unbearably OD. It was an article about my boy Nathan Fielder (the dude behind funny jokes like "Dumb Starbucks" and other funny ass shit), and the author claims to have interviewed him but only has about eight or nine quotes of what Nathan says to him...the rest of the article is asinine autistic description of what was around him as he interviewed him.

"Article" in question: (http://grantland.com/features/nathan-fielder-nathan-for-you-comedy-central-season-2)

This is over description to the point of it being un-fucking-readable. I know the internet is full of hyperbole and calling shit the worst thing ever is overdone...but this is the WORST article I've ever read in my whole entire life. The "journalist" probably talked to his guest for 8 seconds but managed to produce a full length short story of asperger-infested fluff.

Another example of OD seeping its way into other media is from that dumb yet insanely popular podcast This American Life  by ass pie icon extraordinaire Ira Glass. This is the worst interviewer I've ever heard EVER. I listened to him interviewing people a long time ago and Glass in post tends to edit over the audio with his own opinions over-layered over the interview. So, in the final product that hits airwaves, the guest is talking about his/her experiences...and then the sound fades out and you can barely hear him/her talk...and Glass starts saying shit like "When he/she started talking about that...I felt like I was beginning to understand how he/she felt." Okay good for fucking you for thinking that, thanks for fading out the volume in post and inserting your BORING autistic opinions over your guest while they talk...you fantastic bozo.


Tools are better than Over Describing Fluff

I think it was Vladimir Nabakov or Alexander Pushkin (or one of the Russian guys) who said that you shouldn't introduce a piece of information to the reader if that piece of information is not pertinent to the story and/or is a writing tool to set-up some sort of event in the story. I tend to agree with this idea...if you're gonna take ten pages to describe what a wolf or a doorknob looks like...that fucking thing better have an important role to play in your god damn story. The interesting thing is that any item/person/thing at all can become an important story tool.

A Maltese MacGuffin

Alfred Hitchcock referred to these story tools as "MacGuffins," and they are just placemarker objects which drive the story. Anything can be a MacGuffin and they don't need endless lines of description AT ALL.

Examples of MacGuffins many are familiar with are The Maltese Falcon, which is just some silly object that many parties seem infatuated with and desperately want (including Peter "Ren Hoëk" Lorre). Another good one which worked well was Tarantino's "shiny briefcase" MacGuffin from Pulp Fiction. How much did Tarantino describe the briefcase? Not much, we never even knew what was in it. Why didn't he need to describe the briefcase (the major plot point of the story)? Because he's not a moron, that's why.

MacGuffins can be used for minor plot points too not just major ones. You can use a MacGuffin as a "leitmotif" too. Leitmotifs are more common in music but they are applicable to writing tools just as much. A good leitmotif in writing will sort of string-together your shit and make it look sharp, chic, and fucking organized.

A writer who employs leitmotifs very well is that Shigesato Itoi, the writer of literature pieces such as Mother 2 and Mother 3. His works are rife and abundant with leitmotif macguffins that really give the story a real nice flow to it. An example of one of his leitmotif macguffins is the doorknob from Mother 3.

Writing a musical symphony is more scientific than most people think, and writing a book is way more scientific than people think. There's tools you need to employ to do this successfully and the way you string your writing tool events together is kind of like laying foundations and bricks down to build a house or a shack or something.

Conclusion

Fiction is kind of dumb...and it's not because it's a bad art form but because the current popular styles of articulating this art form are annoying and dumb.

Bottom line is...if you take 400 words to describe something then that something and the features you give that something better be important and crucial to the final product.

6 Particularly Obscure Video Games that are Odd and Cool.

I am a big geek and sometimes I like to scour the internet for rare or obscure things. In the case of video games, there's some diamonds in the rough out there. Games that weren't released because they were so strange and odd and original that they were deemed bad. The following are a selection of truly odd (but good) games that not many folks (other than weird internet geeks know about).

1. Taito's Hit the Ice

 Roaming the wastelands lookin' fer beers eh!

Hit the Ice boggles my mind. It's basically what you'd get if you threw Ice Hockey, Dragon Quest, and Slapshot into a blender. You are a Canadian tough guy hockey player who is told by his coach to go out into the wastelands of Canada and win the VHL championship. As a Canadian, I'm interested in how a Japanese company would portray the great game of Hockey and also wonder how it would translate into an RPG genre of game. Basically, Japan perceived us Canadian types as neanderthal gorillas who wander around a giant wasteland searching for hamburgers, chicks, hockey games, and fistfights. I think they hit the nail right on the head with this one. 

All the elements of an RPG are there, you travel the worldmap getting into random encounters (except you don't fight gremlins and shit, instead you are attacked by rival hockey teams who you play 2-on-2 hockey matches against).The trick to winning these battles is to score one goal, then pick-a-fight and punch your opponent in the face until the clock runs out, then hot chicks come out and you celebrate gaining 5 EXP points.

Secret Tips:

1. Do not go into the arenas until you're good, the opposing teams are as fast as fuck and can literally uppercut you across the ice.

2. Eat Hamburgers all the time. Burgers give you vital nutrients and EXP points.

3. Watch out for rowdy arenas in opposing cities where rowdy rednecks will pelt you with beer bottles.

4. Cherry pick. There's no two-line passes or offsides so while your goalie holds the puck skate into the opposing zone then pass it across the entire ice surface and shoot.

5. Use "Dicky" Fontaine cause he has the best name in the game.

 

6. You can't swim so you have to buy an apple to give to an old man who has the life saving inner tube which you can use to cross rivers and streams at will!

2. Enix's Wonder Project 

Wonder Project was an SNES game that tells the story of a guy who makes a robot kid and introduces him into the world of humans. Blind to the ways of mankind this modern day Pinocchio must adjust to the world around him. You don't even control the character you just reward him and punish him depending on what he does. Each stage of the game has different situations and obstacles that require him to react in certain ways, and in order to get him to react in certain ways you must teach him through painstaking repetition and drills. 

For example for some levels of the game he needs to be nice and tame in order to help an old lady or something...while at other times in the game you have to beat the nice out of your son/robot in order to make him aggressive in order to compete in a fighting or athletics competition. It's a strange concept and you really have to play it to understand what I'm talking about. Some behaviors that you taught him at the start of the game have to be washed out of his mind to get him to interact with an object differently for a later stage in the game, it's really difficult to know what you have to do in a lot of cases. He has to be smart at times (make him read the encyclopedia all day), and other times really stupid (make him read comic books all day) in order to progress the game.

The ending is surprisingly terribly heartwrenchingly sad (unless you got 100% in each of the stages).

3. Tomcat's Photoboy 

Photoboy is the fucking best game, whoever made this is a great, reliable, and trustworthy member of the human race. You play as this deranged-faced golden haired youngster who's parents died in a horrible plane crash and now makes a living by taking pictures of fucked up shit for a local newspaper (whacky premise). The gameplay is really addictive and by the time you beat it...you'll look back and wonder what the heck just happened, but you'll know you are a better person for having played it. 

Secret tips: 

1. There's a really rare occurrence in each level that will net you a shitload of points, they are really brief and hard to capture but keep your eyes peeled for EXTRA insane nonsense going on around you (such as the Back to the Future Dolorean going back in time or the Terminator attacking some kid).

2. You can rapid fire at a lot of occurrences and catch them more than once, which is so cheap but once you master it the game is actually quite easy.

3. In the boss stage where your editor is popping up in random boxes and taunting you to take pictures of him you can cheat by clicking the button nonstop which slows the game down to a virtual halt.

Photoboy always reminds me of my childhood dog "Cubby". When I played the boss and didn't know about the slow down trick, I was going at such a pell-mell rate to keep up with the editor that I knocked a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch off the desk and all over the poor dog. He didn't consider either the milk or cereal as real food and didn't seem to care at all that he was covered in it.

4. Seta's Bio Force Ape

Bio Force Ape is quick little 3-level side scroller with slick animations and a great story. It's about this monkey who's friends get kidnapped so he drinks this solution that renders him into a testosterone-ridden, enhanced, super ape who suplexes the hell out of any anthropomorphic bee-humans or crocodile-legged sub-bosses that stand in his way. I love the way he tries to wrestle his way out of any elevator he accidentally goes in, and how he reverse face plants the dinosaur guys.

This game developed a myth around itself between collectors and NES folklorists who knew it existed and knew it was awesome. As questions of how cool it was grew and grew, someone fanned the flames tenfold by releasing ficticious photos of the game which painted it as being too awesome and too hilarious for it's own good.

Bio Force Ape is what Cheetamen 2 aspired to be but failed...the super-mammal side scroller of the ages.

5. Itoi's Mother ZERO

Shigesato Itoi's Mother series has developed a cult following over the years, the games are satirical of the RPG genre yet are very deep and very well written. It's as if the spoof is actually of higher quality than the spoofed you might say. The complete story of how this was ported and translated is available at lostlevels.org.

What makes the Mother series good? It's hard to say, the graphics suck, the gameplay of an RPG in general is repetitive and boring, it tries at times to be annoying on purpose, and the characters are bland. How is it good? It makes no sense...but it just is. 

Tim Rogers from Large Prime Numbers wrote the best review of Mother 2 that I've found and I think he may have figured out why this stupid nonsense is good. He states,

"Shigesato Itoi, producer of Mother 2 and two other games, says in a recent interview that videogames are, at their best, like prostitutes. A prostitute, he is quick to distinguish, is a lot like a lover, only that it requires no emotional input from its momentary significant other.

[Mother 2] is a prostitute that's missing one tooth somewhere you won't discover unless you look at her really hard, and she has this shitty grin on her face for some reason or another. She does nothing to provoke you to be cruel to her. And between the time she takes her stockings off and the time she puts them back on, she's going to tell you a story so creepy you will never be able to forget it. Your time with her will not be entirely comfortable, nor will it be entirely enjoyable." 

- Rogers, T. Literature of the Moment (a critique of Mother 2)

Video games are prostitutes? I think maybe what makes this series fascinating is that its creator is a very odd yet intelligent fellow himself and that his oddness and intelligence carries itself very well from his head into his work. I think Rogers may be right in his assessment of Mother 2, that quote might be the best way to describe the game.

Mother ZERO might fit that description even better, it is unique from start to finish. My favorite character in the game is a lonely soul who helps you out of your own mind as you finish up journeying through it. I don't know how he did it but with just two colors, a handful of pixels, and some words...Itoi managed to make me feel complete empathy for a character in a really silly video game. You can't escape your own mind unless you answer this guy's questions correctly and how are you supposed to know which answers are correct? I have to try and figure out what this guy wants? He wants me to ignore him? Okay, if it will let me get out of my own mind I will gladly ignore you I guess...jeez...what is this game up to? What kind of shtick is this Itoi brother pulling? The whole game is like this too. It's an interesting one that's for sure.

7. Square's Live A Live

Squaresoft used to make SNES games that were really good, it made one or two good Final Fantasy games (VI & VII) and that really great effin' game Chrono Trigger which has a well written story and beautiful music score. Right before they made Chrono Trigger they made a strange game called Live a Live which is sort of hard to describe. It tries to cover a lot of different genres, from western to sci-fi to kung fu...and it makes for an interesting thing. See this site for a more in depth summary.

The Western and Kung Fu chapters are particularly good, I think the key is that it doesn't take itself too seriously which has made recent Square games (anything past 1997) totally awful and dangerously emo.

If you make anything creative, whether it's a song, a story, a video game (etc.), you really have to make sure you don't take it too seriously. A video game is supposed to be fun above all other things. The games they make these days take themselves too serious.