Livin' This Life... ALIVE!

I think it was the venerable Beatle, Paul McCartney, who at the Super Bowl once said...

"When you were young and your heart was an open book... you used to say live and let live (y'know ya did, y'know ya did, y'know ya did.....)

But...

In this ever changin' world in which we live in makes you give in and cry.... ya say live and let DIE!"

-McCartney, P. (Beatle), James Bond: Live and Let Die (1973, run time 121 mins.)

This is very very true but I recently replayed a video game I liked ... the re-released amped-up version of a cool old video game that challenges this time's old axiom.

Yes we must Live n' Let Die... but while we are living it ... We gotta LIVE A LIVE!

This game rules! Searching my blog... I've mentioned this game twice before it says even as far back as 2011.

Back then it was considered a "Lost Treasure" that never got an American release. Times have changed... as 28 years later... they gave this great game an American release. Wow.

That should give the Mother 3 fans hope, I think. People have been petitioning to get an official Mother 3 release to American audiences for decades now. If Live A Live can get one 28 years after it was made... then anything's possible!

Anyways, if you've read this blog over the years... you probably know I'm a huge Square head. I really marked-out to the Golden Era of Squaresoft as a 12 year old kid. Did I ever. Their games were so different than what anyone else was making. They had full orchestras, well-written stories and characters, cool moves... these games...they were in a league of their own for a while.

I consider the "Golden Age" of Squaresoft to be when they made... Final Fantasy IV (2 in USA), Live A Live, Final Fantasy VI (3 in USA), Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy VII (7 in USA).

That era would be about from 1991 to 1997. For a good seven years... this company could do NO WRONG. It had the gilded touch! Everything Squaresoft touched turned to solid gold!

I remember being confused a bit in this era when Final Fantasy VII (7) came out... because we only had three up to that point released in the West. We had one on original Nintendo which wasn't even that great... we had "2" which was actually "4" the one with Cecil and Kain and Rosa and everyone... then "3" to the West was actually "6" the one with Terra and everyone.... and then in 1997 the seventh installment was called "7"... so we went from 3 to 7, basically.

I'm sitting there going... where's the other three games? The internet explained that two on the original Nintendo (NES) were not brought here and also the fifth game on SNES was not released here either. We didn't get them because they were deemed not interesting enough for the USA market that preferred action games and side-scrollin' violent stuff. To be fair, I get it, that these games are for a more docile and literate crowd and maybe the fan-base just wasn't there in America back then.

I'm so happy we got friggin' Chrono Trigger though, man. That game, in that era it was released, was pure GREATNESS. The greatest game, guys. Wow.

So Live A Live came out in 1994... and we didn't get it. Which is a shame in retrospect. To be honest... I can see why they skipped on an American release for this... MESS of a game. I say that in a positive way when I describe this game as a mess. It is an eclectic mish-mash of silliness and coolness all smashed together in this unhinged package and then thrown onto a chess board.

Oh and it's an emotional roller coaster too! This is another reason I think video games don't get an American release is if the story content is deemed to touch on sensitive issues... which to me is ridiculous.

America has no problem releasing the most insane violence simulators to its young crop of fragile minds but if a story touches on something deemed difficult for a kid to see... forget it.

Then again it might've not been America censoring these games but Nintendo. Nintendo wanted its global reputation to be built on family friendly fun.... it probably nixed a lot of its games on its own from getting an American release.

It's funny now, people are watching the 1993 Super Mario Bros. (run time: 105 mins.) movie after seeing the new Mario movie that's out and just collectively being weirded out about how strange it actually is. The 1993 Mario Bros. movie is not what you expect it to be. America has different sensibilities, I guess. In the mind of America the 1993 Mario film became a dystopian punk-rock struggle as Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, Samantha Mathis, and Mojo Nixon... stand up to the evil Dennis Hopper... who is trying to use a gun that can de-evolve people into primitive versions of their species!

Okay.......

I guess in the end... We Are ALL DEVO!!

I think it was more of not understanding what America wanted that kept these games from coming out... and I really think Japanese video game companies... especially post-Mario (1993) film... were so confused at America and what the nation actually believed in and stuff. Eventually Squaresoft even built a base in Hawaii and hired Americans to make a RPG aimed at American audiences... and the result was Secret of Evermore in 1996. It is a decent game. Secret of Evermore was a pretty good game.

What a strange time, honestly. So many great video games came out at that time. Earthbound (Mother 2 in Japan) which is set in a make-believe version of 1990s America... is probably the greatest video game ever made still to this day. It's so fun and good.

Reading some of my old video games articles...I've said some not-so-positive things about Square... or now it's called Square Enix... after they merged with the Dragon Quest people. I remember writing a long article many years ago about how much I disliked Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy VIII (8).

I really think there was a schism in the company in 1997... you saw it blossom in Final Fantasy VIII where the stories were not as well-written and the characters were not as likeable as previous Square games. Back then I thought they were just going for a different audience... like maybe some executive came in and told them that they are trying to get a more wealthier demographic to play these games and you have to change them.

Who knows...

I read an article once, a while ago, that said the Japanese government was so upset that young people spent so much time playing video games... that they sent out some sort of a decree that video game companies had to make their games worse... on purpose. Less addictive than worse, really. I read that Final Fantasy VIII was Squaresoft's version, possibly, of trying to make a game so bad that kids put the controller down and went outside. I believe it... I think I do... Final Fantasy VIII is a truly bad game. It really is.

If you play Final Fantasy VIII (8) with the angle on it that it was made as a parody to make fun of its own audience... it actually IS a good game. This mopey jabroni running around doing pointless nonsense and constantly feeling sorry for himself... and day dreaming and getting his junctioned magic all out of place from being an absent-minded turd-wad... that's how teenagers who played video games in 1999 were! If Squaresoft was trying to make their audience look in the mirror and learn something about themselves... then I actually have to amend my opinion of the game and change it from D- to D+.

As for looking in the mirror and learning something about our own selves ... Live A Live... wow... it still hits home with that. I really think this game is a masterpiece and highly suggest people play the new re-master of Live A Live. I played it on Steam the other week or so and really have to give the new Live A Live...

...11/10.

This is really how I remember Squaresoft games being as a kid playing them in the 90s. It was the Golden Age of the JRPG genre. They were so unique and different than anything else out there.

Oh and let me tell you about this HD-2D thing they got going. That is a thing of beauty. It's old school but it's new school! It looks like the stuff we played in 1993 but all souped-up! It's a thing of beauty is what it is!

Live A Live isn't the first who got this engine... Octopath Traveler got this engine first, I think. That game is basically a very Live A Live style game but minus the insane mind-bending nonsense that makes Live A Live so unique.

Eiyuden Chronicles: One Hundred Heroes is said to be in this slick new HD-2D engine too which is making me mark out before I've even played it yet, even.

I don't think video games need to have super realistic graphics... in fact... it makes them less fun in some ways. Do we expect our cartoons to be super realistic and we have to want to confuse them with reality or do we prefer cartoons to be artistic art with their own unique fun styles? The latter most definitely.

I think the HD-2D engine gives them room to focus more on story and characters then to always be worried about if some hamburger looks real or some chair looks real. Live A Live is a damned rock opera! It doesn't care if some fish-shaped pastry looks like how a fish-shaped pastry would look exactly like it would in real-actual life! Live A Live is too busy rocking my socks off to care about something as completely dumb as real life!

I was reading an interview with Takashi Tokita where he says he wants to make a sequel now... Live A Live 2: Livin' More Aliver! If I was Square Enix... I would give this man the green light to go! The green light to rock and roll!

It's time to make a bunch of HD-2D Rock Operas! Oh Yeah!

Yeah!

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.