A Homeschooler's Pensieve

Did Ocarina of Time outdo Skyward Sword?

2012-02-16T18:46:00.018-05:00

Since the release of Skyward Sword, the Legend of Zelda fan base has been obsessed with critiquing this latest installment and deciding whether or not it "breaks free" from the "shadow of Ocarina of Time" that has so dominated everyone's outlook on the series. People are quick to defend or criticize nearly every aspect of the game, be it the same as any previous title or at all different from them. The problem is, too much of this is being done with the perfection of OoT in mind, a stifling qualifier that has stood over every game's success for the last few console generations.

So, while everyone (including myself) has something to say about Skyward Sword's achievements and failures, I have decided to subvert the question and look at the oh-so-defining Zelda. Is it really worthy of its own fame?

Item 1: Gameplay
Ocarina of Time has pretty solid gameplay; it's simple, if a bit unrefined. But what can you expect from the first attempt? This is the game that first brought Zelda into the third dimension, so naturally it's a bit rough around the edges. Mostly this has to do with object interactions and the limitations of what the player can do: actions can be a tad chunky at times, the enemies don't sport a lot of variety, and Link's moveset is at its most basic. In a nutshell, it sports a less developed, less polished engine than what we have today (motion controls aside).

"But wait," you say, "that's not fair!" It can't be criticized just because games have become more sophisticated with time! Well, you're absolutely right. And one must respect it for having established the system as well, correct? Ah, here's the sticky part! Yes, it defined the mechanics of 3D Zelda that have been employed to this day, and it deserves great credit for that. However, that does not necessarily make the gameplay as good as its own derivatives: dismissal of later games' mechanics because of the prestige held by their earliest employment goes beyond respect and assents to bias. The harsher levels of this bias entail an indifference to extra features, such as rolling through bushes and small pots; and hatred of any deviation, such as Skyward Sword's infamous stamina meter. Do you know what a drag climbing ledges is without parkour Link?

Let's face it: Ocarina of Time has the most primitive gameplay of the 3D Zelda era. Is less really more? Not when it provides fewer avenues for entertainment. Many of this game's actions become quite dull, in and of themselves; if the adventuring were as linear as in Skyward Sword, you'd probably lose interest.

Item 2: Structure
Whatever you may argue about SS being linear, there's no doubt OoT avoids this issue. The problem is, it's somewhat shoddily done. The benefits of freedom are tainted by the intended progression: if you want to do things in your order, be prepared to put up with ignorant and impassive NPCs, incessantly misdirected information, and juggled event triggers.

Once you've pulled the Master Sword, you receive instructions to head to the Forest Temple. There you find the bow, an item necessary for hitting the eye switches found in most (if not all) dungeons. Once you have this, you can do anything you want, as long as it doesn't require returning to childhood. Shiek blocks the Master Sword's pedestal in the Temple of Time until you have actually beaten the Forest Temple, and she will not acknowledge any other actions on your part. You could consider her ignorant, except she will show up to teach you the Bolero of Fire and Serenade of Water should you sequence-break, then continues to devote her intercourse exclusively to whether of not you've awakened Saria as the first sage.

Moreover, though the dungeons after the Forest Temple require little order, there is still a "recommended" one, to which end Navi offers her apparently happenstance thoughts. Whichever is next up by this nature is what you will be forever reminded of, no matter if you're making progress elsewhere.

Aside from the above, the openness of the game is welcomed. OoT's best asset may be its dungeons, which require you to wander about in an unguided and thoroughly nonlinear fashion to locate keys and new pathways. They provide a reasonable explorational challenge, though at times are exasperating due to overlong segments that you must redo upon screwing up or discovering you don't have enough keys. Also frustrating can be that one thing you keep passing over, leaving you questioning your sanity or the designers' insurance against the player becoming permanently trapped. Majora's Mask probably surpasses OoT in level design here, although it's lairs could stand to be a bit larger, being so few.

Anyhow, with such a large, open world, Ocarina of Time ultimately trumps Skyward Sword, right? Well, until you realize how much is wasted. The latter gets criticized for how little you need or are able to utilize collected bugs and treasures, how little use certain items get, and how pointless some rewards are. Okay, so the upgrade system is arguably underused, swimming is isolated, and that bigger wallet isn't really needed. In this case, linearity might be a blessing in disguise; you hardly have to go out of your way to achieve 100%, and the gameplay keeps it fun anyway. In OoT, on the other hand, there are plenty of side quests and things to collect, but with the exception of larger ammunition packs (which SS nailed very uniquely) and heart pieces, you don't put much use to any of the extras besides the bottles (only one of which takes time to get). Ice arrows? There's really no point. Rupees? The most you ever spend is usually on magic beans, which cap at 100 (and you can sacrifice planting one at Lake Hylia thanks to the Scarecrow's Song). Only if you're unlucky enough to lose a tunic will you require bigger wallets, which otherwise merely let you store a greater quantity at once of the infinite cash that will never leave your pocket.

The wallets come from collecting Gold Skulltulas, which is a travesty of its own. Granted, you get a piece of heart and one of the best features in the game (the Stone of Agony, which makes the rumble pack detect secrets) from this, but for a small price. You need 20 for the rumble rock and 50 for the heart quarter, out of a total of 100 scattered throughout the land and dungeons. You'll bump into 20 easily, and 50 aren't hard to find just by keeping your eyes open. So, what do you get for tracking down every last one in the most gargantuan collection mission in Zelda history (not counting figurines)? 200 rupees! Yes, you basically get to see what the father of the cursed family looks like, plus bragging rights. I understand Nintendo likes to make sure the less talented can still get their hands on the main goodies, but really, we elite spider hunters deserved something like sword beams for this!

Item 3: Story
Ocarina of Time, the quintessential Zelda story... What could possibly be faulty here? We all know this epic tale, so I'll cut to the answers.

First, Ganondorf. The man is ambitious enough to summon Meteor or maybe make a peanut butter sandwich. Sure, he's vile, he decimates the land in the course of seven years, and he wields the Triforce of Power. But he doesn't seem to understand his own words. Here we have an inconsistent villain who tosses you aside as a nobody outside the gates of Hyrule Castle, then turns around and claims he knew all along that you would open the Sacred Realm. A ploy, acting like he didn't know anything of you? He did see you through the window with Zelda when you spied on him earlier; it's possible he wanted to maintain the appearance of chasing the princess in order to let you get into the Temple of Time.

More likely though, he's just a braggart. After you awaken the sages, Zelda reveals herself, and Ganondorf captures her. After claiming that it went according to plan, save for your accomplishing a bit more than he expected, he steals her away and declares that he will soon possess two Triforce pieces. With them, he laughs, he will "become the true ruler of the world", even if he still lacks the final piece. In reality, he idles away the time playing the organ until you arrive, then tries to take you out. Why?

At first, it seems obvious. He notes that the Triforce pieces resonate at close proximity, wanting to become one. As this is how he assembles the golden power in The Wind Waker, it makes sense that, despite his earlier boast, he cannot obtain the lost pieces individually through force. Yet we know this is not true: the very first game proved otherwise! Link, having collected the Triforce of Wisdom, slew Ganon and obtained his piece, the Triforce of Power. One could argue that only a hero of unbreakable spirit could do this, one who could claim the whole Triforce without it splitting from imbalance in the individual's virtues. But such a contingency only makes sense if an imbalanced person could never, ever have the whole Triforce. Why? Because if it splits in the first place, and you can't kill the other holders to take their pieces, the only way to obtain the two not in your possession would be to make them reassemble as in WW. And, being unclaimed at that point, it would most likely split all over again when you touched it, because you are imbalanced!

There are three possible explanations for Ganondorf's behavior in The Wind Waker. One, it did not occur to him that it would split again; two, he was counting on it not splitting as he was a more balanced person (evil though he was). And three, he merely wanted to make a wish, and the Triforce will grant your heart's desire, at least partially, despite splitting from imbalance. What Ocarina of Time (and its predecessor, A Link to the Past) have to offer on this last theory is a discussion for another time. At present we can conclude that OoT Ganondorf was the Great King of Procrastination, or he would have taken Zelda's Triforce before practicing for his recital. I wouldn't be surprised if he only trashed Hyrule six years in, given how strongly he seems to have inherited Demise's ability to "spare a few moments."

Unfortunately, this lack of action plagues the whole of the game's progression. Unlike Skyward Sword, Link is the only one actually running around doing anything most of the time. This is in part thanks to his seven-year absence, during which Ganondorf appears to have done most of his pillaging. It's not a bad concept, leaving you to witness the aftermath and try to set things as they were before. However, some of the rectifications you set out for never take place; and coupled with the aforementioned structural issues, the world remains quite static in each of its respective time states. The Zoras are still all dead.

And why should Link put up with any of this? As we know, drawing the Master Sword unseals the Sacred Realm and allows Ganondorf access to the Triforce. At the same time, replacing the blade puts Link back where he was before being sealed for seven years to reach adulthood. Couldn't he just leave it there and never let the evil future happen? Does time pass in the child timeline while Link is active in the adult timeline? It makes sense that, if Link's aging only counts for the sake of wielding the Blade of Evil's Bane, then putting it back would reverse that aging entirely, placing him back at the age he was when he first drew it, at which point he had not drawn it; at which point, therefore, the Sacred Realm was still sealed! In effect, which timeline branch ensues depends not only on Link's success, but also on his choice: if he's defeated, Ganondorf obtains the whole Triforce and the sealing war occurs; if he draws the Master Sword and defeats Ganon, the adult timeline proceeds; and if he realizes how much tragedy he can avert, he stays a kid, protects the Sacred Realm, and brings about the child timeline.

How about that? You can win the game by not finishing it. On one hand, this cleans up the timeline a bit by proving each branch exclusive to the others; on the other, Zelda's act of sending Link back to his childhood in the end makes less sense than ever. Not only does it call the further progression of the adult branch into question, it's also thoroughly unnecessary. Thanks for hitting the reset button.

To top it all off, the OoT's writing isn't the best. Perhaps this is the fault of the translation, but the dialogue is absolutely bemusing at times, leaving you scratching your brain as to what a character was trying to say or why they were saying such a thing in the first place (Ganondorf is only one such offender). When you add this to all the other issues, the whole game's proceedings become rather unclear, from people and places to the histories and legends that intertwine with them. Too often one looks back and asks, "What exactly happened?" It's ironic that the most fundamental plot in the whole Zelda universe is more riddled with fridge logic than any other. It may be a great story, but its integrity hardly withstands the execution.

Item 4: Navi
Ah, Navi, come hither. Link's fairy companion has amassed a lot of hatred over the years, as we all know. The question is, is she a worse familiar than Fi?

The latter finds herself criticized on two major counts: problems with her loquaciousness, and her degree of character development. Let's compare.

Navi certainly talks less; however, when she's not being the mother of Captain Obvious, she's blurting out statements that sound either completely random or like she's winking in your face. "I wonder what Saria would say," indeed. Are you a GameFaqs member with bad tact, or do you have your head in the clouds? This personified hint system is less blatant than in subsequent titles (though certainly devoid of subtlety), and it seems to be intended to aid those who have been wandering about because they haven't been able to find their next goal by themselves; but whatever it was meant to be, it failed, because Navi interrupts you far too frequently with the same old comment, if not the information you just heard ten seconds ago.

She has two saving graces: you can ignore her and not push the button to hear what she has to say, and if you do (either because you want to end the annoyance or use the first-person view) you can skip through her text quickly (an unfortunate deficiency of Fi's, though she has enough personality to be more interesting than Navi; more on that below). As if anticipating our relief, the designers made one exception. Whenever you enter a room with a wallmaster, she stops you without consent to warn you, and her text proceeds at the painfully slow pace that is alternative to skipping straight to the end, which is not an option in this case. When you don't expect it, it's more disruptive; when you know it's coming, the waste of time is more irritating; and either way, you have to wait for her to finish a line you've read countless times about an enemy that you can see and hear coming a mile away. At least when she hollers because you've walked up to a locked door without a key, simply walking away shuts her up.

As for character, Navi is plain irksome. She has little personality and a simple role: follow you and provide one-liner hints. She is completely static, but her dialogue at certain points suggests otherwise. The first you hear of the Master Sword is her reaction to seeing it: "It's that legendary blade... The Master Sword!!" This leaves you wondering what she knows and why, which she never discloses. Toward the end of the game she acts somewhat personally toward you, apologizing for not being able to assist fighting Ganondorf and enthusiastically sticking with you for the last battle. At least Fi, who specifically reflects upon her relationship with Link, actually came off as a person of sorts. Her feelings at the end of SS may come off strangely given her serene, duty-oriented attitude during the adventure; but the impression exists of an unspoken friendship that grew through their trials together, now realized at parting. Navi, on the other hand, exhibits no such depth, but still tries to matter. Then she flies away. Talk about a lack of character development.

But hey, at least she's not long-winded. That distinction goes to Kaepora Gaebora, the owl I would swear comes from Winnie the Pooh except he doesn't drone exclusively about himself. The lesson is we can't win. Resistance is futile.

Conclusion
Ocarina of Time is quite overrated. With so many flaws it fails to surpass its successor, Skyward Sword, though the latter isn't perfect itself. Indeed, both games fall short in various areas; so if the question surrounding the newest installment must be whether it bests OoT, here is the most impartial answer possible:

The Wind Waker already did.

Halloween Revision

2011-10-31T20:19:00.005-04:00

After sitting outside for half an hour in case there were still some kids going around the neighborhood, I came up with a great modification for Halloween. Make it a two-day deal: on the 30th, the adults go around giving candy to the kids at their houses. The next night, the kids go around with thank-you cards. Sound weird?

Actually, it would be very convenient. Adults would be saved sitting in the cold/answering the door for two hours in exchange for some excercise (since they're the ones who need it), the major payoff being a shorter commitment with a known ending. The kids could learn door-answering etiquette followed by the importance of active gestures of gratitude. Plus, the mass-mailboy event would let them burn all that sugar rather than dive into it in post-Halloween exhaustion only to supercharge themselves after it would have been useful.

The only thing I haven't figured out is how the costumes and spooks would come into play. And I guess adults wouldn't be saved from the doorbell unless the kids put their letters in the mailbox, which would defeat one big learning experience. And then there's the safety issue of having adults leave to give out candy while other adults visit their kids.

You know what? Forget it.

Spirit of the Forest

2011-10-24T12:22:00.010-04:00

In one exam room of my local hospital facility hangs a piece of art drawn by a freshman of the nearby public school. Such works tend to adorn the walls of various public buildings, and it can be interesting to observe them as you wait or pass by; but usually they do not hold my attention for long, if they even succeed in catching my eye as worthwhile curiosities. This picture in particular was no different as a decoration in the background, but when my attention focused on it, I was strangely captivated by a single element. The central feature of a wildly colored and populated image had been hiding from me in plain sight, its calm masked by the energy of the surrounding environment.

It was the face of a girl, plain and simple, blending into all the ruckus of summer nature. Fish and butterflies surrounded her in a disorderly halo of romanticism, and her hair was of thick, green foliage. Beneath this, forking off across either side of her slender neck, was apparently a yellow shirt with a diamond pattern, curving downward and narrowing into a fish wish its broad tail at her throat. From her ears (one exposed, the other unseen behind the leafy hair) hung brown, fuzzy objects of irregular shape: upon close inspection they appear to be monkeys clinging with half their limbs. All this composed a queer picture which I would have acknowledged and dismissed, had it not been for her face.

Her features were rather ordinary but extremely steady; the nose and mouth lacked expertise, but they were not clunky or obscenely misrepresented. Her eyes sat stark and uniform above the sheer vertical lines of the nose-bridge, and they were topped with eyebrows of perfect length and a sleek, even arch. She might have been mundane if not for nestling within the exotic livelihood that clothed her and buzzed with color. She herself was pale, accented with pink-red lips and a precise flush through her high cheeks; her eyes were a light, grayish blue and the eyebrows had the dark-gray tinge of thin carbon. Altogether she was sharply symmetrical, save for the modest erraticism of nose and mouth---and a slight, rightward shift of the eyes.

What became so mystical to me was not how the environment changed her, but how she transformed her surroundings. She absorbed the leaves and they became a soft blanket; the animals were drawn into her simplicity almost until they ceased to exist. And there, clad in shades of green bright and dark, brushed with reserves of red upon the lightness of cold skin, this silent dryad came to life.

Now I saw a youth, mysteriously composed, hiding such secrets that one would dared not have spoken to her. Her eyes were calm and softly keen, holding the most pure innocence and wonder at once with an unknown wisdom veiled in gray-blue mist. The nose and lips made her organic while she maintained an elven sharpness beyond the flesh. The many shades of green gave an indescribable fullness to her hair, which was as human as it was plantlike. Some leaves were veined among the smooth and solidly colored majority, giving extra character to the nymphish drapery as it flowed down to where her shoulders would have been. A carbon imprint, perhaps a shadow, of a leaf wrapped across one cheekbone in spry but calculated audacity, and the edges of more disrupted her light skin at the side and bottom of her head. The odd string hung curled from her hair, one resting upon her forehead, another flanking her chin.

She might have been a tree-spirit of Greek lore, but such a thought somehow contrasts with how familiar she seemed. As strange as she was, she was normal; and yet she was fascinating. She was plain but beautiful, and she was real though preternatural. The girl was a child gazing with internal wistfulness and understanding, waiting and watching behind a face of the most simple and relaxed sort of energy. With the lights off, her face seemed to glow beneath the dark, amorphous cover of her own foliage, under which she had withdrawn; her features played as mere ghosts except for the eyes, whose gaze was indiscernable but somehow more fierce, all the while full of innocence and quiet excitement.

I eventually disregarded all the wildlife around her, totally enraptured by this spirit of the forest. She was quite original, and therefore hard to place. Yet I think I know where I could find her. I know what fantastical place would fittingly be her home.

Kokiri Forest.

How often does this happen to you?

2011-05-10T16:19:00.004-04:00

Now you know why a cruddy computer was able to put my ambitions from 2008 in the back of the freezer. It's that cruddy.

Stereo Flatland

2011-05-03T22:12:00.006-04:00

There is a Paper Mario game in the works for the 3DS. I cannot help laughing at this.

Paper Mario is a 3D (or "2.5D") game with 2D characters and objects. It tosses Flatland into the next dimension for a visually fun game. Mario and co. run around as little paper cutouts, flipping around to reveal no depth as they wander about 360 degrees.No doubt the 3D effect of the new handheld is meant to enhance the show of two-dimensional parts shifting mathematical planes. What I find ironic is that a fuller presentation of 3D will lead to a truer grasp of 2D. It sounds silly but it makes sense. The more you define the spacial axes, the better objects of different dimensions can be distinguished.

And yes, I know Paper Mario doesn't really have 2D parts, only 3D ones with a minimal length on one axis. But I won't be that picky. If you want to, I'd try building Doom for the 3DS. I don't know what those sprites that always face you would do to my eyes. Actually, that part sounds neat. I'd be more concerned about the perspective-bending that occurs when you look up and down right next to a wall and such. Great, now I'm curious. Thank you, anticipated nitpicker.

The Dragon's Roar

2011-04-28T16:12:00.011-04:00

Of things best in the abstract, one of my favorites is the roar of a dragon.

Through the years many interpretations of dragons have come and gone, and as our technology becomes better we produce increasingly "realistic" versions of the beast. Its various attributes which we abstract from the animal world in our imaginations gain material representation in art, and we can then apprehend the whole construction as though it were a reality.

With the visual comes the aural. We know what similar life forms sound like in real life, so when we design a dragon bodily we can have a good idea how it might sound based on size and animal makeup.

But as a creature born of the imagination, there is no "correct" portrayal of either aspect. Though the physical essence has definite parameters, the audible potential is much broader. Mankind has never heard a dragon, so the sound of one is generally based on individual mental association. And while biological sciences can provide much insight into how something sounds and why, such accidents of a mythological entity are ultimately unknown. To define its vocal abilities by its physical structure is a rather limiting course of action.

When the scenario doesn't demand a completely organic level of realism, I find that the best dragon sounds are those with a touch of paranormal extravagance. A sound that wouldn't quite be heard in reality gives life to the mythos of the dragon, preserving the fantastical quality of the unfamiliar without seeming altogether alien. This tends to be lost by the most "realistic" dragons' overblown komodo bellows; we feel so familiar with them that they are no longer as impressive by their very being.

The following are what I consider the top three dragon roars from video games. Let's begin on the realistic side sound-wise. Cut to about 0:45 and 3:30 for the best examples.

Openness to esthetic variety also gives way to originality regarding a dragon's place in its world; for example, how a dragon could translate as a character. Wind Waker's Lord Valoo is, to say the least, a very abstract dragon all around. His long neck and puffed jowls may look ridiculous at first, but the deep, hornlike howl he emits give his physique credibility and vice versa (except for the dinky wings, but that's another matter). The strength of his voice denotes his guardian status, and the beholder can't help but feel respectful of his magnificence.

A very different character is Ridley, the cold-blooded Space Pirate from Metroid.

This is not the kind of guy you want to meet in the dark (which is exactly how you do in the game). His otherworldly screech suits both his appearance and his vicious personality. Unfortunately, none of his incarnations after Super Metroid are up to snuff: in the Prime games he is more on the "realistic" side (the biggest problem being his generic keeping with the bulk of the game's creature sounds), and in the GBA titles he is pitifully cheesy.

My other favorite doesn't quite belong to a dragon. It is the cry of the skeleton coaster in New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

I like this one because of the wildness it contains, even apart from the scenario it belongs to. I can't quite picture what would be making this call in the wild, but I have a strong feeling for the kind of place or situation in which it might be heard. Here the mythos is interpreted only enough to provide a baseline for further subjectivity, and even this is powerful.

I'm glad dragons don't exist. For starters I'm glad I never have to worry about running into one. But I also appreciate a fact obvious enough to be overlooked: that the dragon's imaginary essence is an opportunity for innumerable fantasies, and its unfixed qualities lead to creativity and an awe of the unreal. Among these flexible attributes, the sound of its roar is definitely one of the greatest.

Post Revision & Anime

2011-04-27T22:47:00.007-04:00

Post fix 1: I have finished editing (probably not for the last time) my recent piece about sophistication according to base complexity and definition. I apologize for what was originally a confusing log of the evolution of my thought process and encourage you to read the revision.

Post fix 2: I was scrolling through the list of my posts, feeling nostalgic for the time I would casually blog whatever I was thinking about from a recent experience, when I found this. I immediately realized it needs some followup, for I have seen two animes. Here's the update.

S.C. was one day watching something on YouTube which he told me was the first episode of a space-western anime. After hearing how a friend had told him about it and another one in a conversation most simply put as "stuff like Firefly," and having had a glimpse of the exposition, I decided to use my spare time to check it out.

My curiosity could not have prepared me for the experience. Trigun was fascinating enough to make me set aside my repulsion from the general style and put up with the outrageous moments of anime as I knew it; and as I watched each episode, these feelings dissolved into an appreciation for the art and an acceptance of the silliness as a quality of the characters I grew to love. This may not have happened if the show wasn't tame compared to my previous exposures to anime (the stereotypical ridiculousness was never in the form of bad drama/action), and it was certainly aided by the simple philosophical intrigue offered by the wandering protagonist.

You are introduced to a cornball but highly skilled marksman with an unknown past, hunted and feared by all for something that apparently warrants a sixty billion dollar (double dollar, technically) reward for his capture. The first episode sets the stage for a season of exploits that tease and slowly reveal who this man is, as well as where and when the show is set. Vash the Stampede is known to show up at a random town and obliterate the entire place; but in this trail of destruction people forget the absurd fact that nobody ever dies. Following him around, you quickly see that he is not the monster everyone thinks he is. He foils the wicked, escapes the impossible, and helps everybody to a childlike extreme without his name passing as more than a rumor.

But what starts off simple and lighthearted becomes deep and mysterious as Vash's past hunts him down better than any bounty hunter. Through most of the season, revelations are given in the form of things to question, and everything is woven together by the end with extremely well-written flashbacks of things you had and hadn't seen before. The philosophical (and even theological!) spikes in an enormous sci-fi tale told from the crux backwards as Vash moves forwards. I was amazed.

And I eagerly turned to Cowboy Bebop, the counterpart among fans, which is more like Firefly than Trigun. I no longer had to take anime quirks in stride because this show steered clear of them. The art outdid itself, and the content was all over the place and awesome all the way.

Spike Spiegel and company are bounty hunters ("cowboys") trying to snag a living in outer space, shooting to bring in the wanted but usually ending up involved in much more than they intended. Typically they set things straight and honest where they would not have considered it their business and come up shorthanded where they insist it matters; they're like a small gang of Han Solos.

The show at large follows the various misadventures of this bunch; but while there is little of a unifying plot, the world is pleasantly knitted together. The writers achieve a delicate presentation that gives pieces of a whole without overtly assembling them. One scenario will provide information that another references for different reasons, and both treat it like common knowledge. The characters know the whole so you can take it for granted, and this works wonderfully.

Such coherence makes way for the complex crossing of paths between the characters as each makes a personal journey reconciling their past with their future. The true beauty of Cowboy Bebop is this collective dynamic, this band of friends traveling different roads through an evolving fellowship with each other. It masterfully portrays the joint individuality and universality of human life while exploring countless topics and situations.

(The show's one failing is how explicit the content can be at times. On top of the language and rather bloody shootouts, it very bluntly portrays a decadent culture that could be implied without showing some guy's collection of erotica plastered on the wall, bursting in on a pair of gays when trying to track down their crime boss, etc. This kind of thing varies from the odd camera angle to what is essentially a brief topless shot for plot purposes. View with discretion; if you can see Firefly, you can watch this.)

So, as always, the stereotypical conceals unique excellence. I am not specifically an anime fan, but two of the best TV shows I have seen are anime. Somebody told me these came from the golden age of anime and most programs these days are garbage; considering the decline I have witnessed in American kids' shows and cartoons, I believe it.

My God's Right Here

2011-04-24T00:50:00.000-04:00

Happy Easter! I'd like to celebrate with a Christian inversion of the challenge, "Where is your God now?"

We really need more of this stuff.

Good Friday, Earth!

2011-04-22T09:02:00.001-04:00

Today is both Earth Day and Good Friday. You'd think restraunts would take advantage of this and advertize, "Go green and meat-free with salads for 50¢!"

Tell me if they are. I'll be surprised.

Have a holy Good Friday, everyone.

Don't Explain, Just Repeat (Hoot!)

2011-04-21T10:33:00.012-04:00

I often find writing to be most limited in that I cannot be certain a reader will understand my present discourse before I go further. When conversing, I can tell firsthand if someone follows my point, and I can approach it in another fashion as necessary. With writing I can only try my best and follow guidelines, but at certain points I simply need feedback. If I never wanted to rewrite anything, the best I could do would be to vainly pepper my ideas with the phrase, "With me so far?"

It would be superfluous to write the same thing multiple times with different phrasing. If I knew what was understandable, I would only need to write that. Asking the reader if they were with me could provoke little other than rereading the part they didn't get. Last night I was revising a particularly loaded post (I'll let you know when it's done) when this fact gave me an idea.

I want to make some sort of HTML tool that you could stick in your posts just to tease this. The owl from Zelda, Kaepora Gaebora, would sit rotating his head and asking you if he should repeat himself. If you click "Yes" the page would scroll to the last spot where you placed some kind of starter point; you could have multiple owls in one post. Thus would the character famous for identical reiterations of info get his share of loving humor in reference instead of merely annoyed memories.
Unless you scrolled through a post too fast and accidentally passed him, which would automatically hit "Yes." No, I'm kidding.

Redemption Creamer

2011-04-17T21:32:00.006-04:00

Easter is a pretty universal Christian celebration, but what Christ did for us is not universally agreed upon. As a Catholic, I believe He made us new by washing away our sins with his blood. Protestants (at least some) disagree. I do not know how many different ideas may exist in the various Protestant communities; but the comparison I've heard goes something like, "Protestants think we are dung heaps, and Christ's sacrifice did not change us to glittering snow, but rather covered the dung with it so you can't see what's underneath."

Dung heaps, eh? It's a pretty evocative image. It also works well when you say explicitly what Catholics believe. But why not bring the analogy up to modern times? For I thought of one that gains humor and firsthand experience while still getting the point across perfectly:

"Protestants think that we are coffee, and Christ gives us sugar and cream; but no matter how much sugar and cream you put into coffee, it never stops tasting like coffee. Eventually you're just willing to ignore the coffee taste because of the sugar and cream taste."

Granted, most people won't back this comparison because they actually like coffee. And the monks probably wouldn't have appreciated their craft being used as such a symbol. I doubt they ever applied theology to roasting beans.

Darn monks.

The Fruits of Simplicity and the Importance of the Undefined

2011-04-02T10:51:00.045-04:00

There is a famous computer simulation called "Conway's Game of Life," in which dots in a grid appear and disappear according to a certain set of criteria. The dots create more, go away, or maintain their existence based on how many others surround them. Such a simple system is capable of creating incredibly complex visuals. The interesting thing is these visuals tend to become less entertaining the more complex the base system, especially the grid, is. The patterns in a hex-based system, as opposed to the standard square one, are of a more or less predictable nature next to the latter. Many cool designs can appear, but the variation on the general result has enough limit to make a user defining the rules and initial positions lose interest. The basic four-sided system is much more fun to tinker with, as I can personally attest having spent unknown hours playing with a colorful version from an old "After Dark" screen saver program.

This simulation is the best example I can find to demonstrate a fact of nature: simplicity produces complexity.

If the atom were not such a simple structure, it could not as effectively form the many myriads of physical matter we observe day-to-day. If mathematics did not begin with the smallest unit, it could not calculate everything it needs to. The reason for this phenomenon should be obvious. A function is naturally limited by the size, as it were, of its parts: given a finite space in which to build a structure, Legos will allow more variation than Duplos. Also, the more complicated the parts, the more specifically they must work together and hence the easier it is for them not to (consider exclusive Lego pieces tailored to their specific sets; they are hard to use in an original work). In effect, there is an inverse relationship between the complexity of interacting parts and the limitedness of their results.

Unfortunately, a creator often destroys true simplicity when he tries to design it. If a unit is too individual it will broaden the entire construction to maintain its individuality. If it is too specialized it will need more specific parts with which to interact. In both cases the unit adds to the total complexity of the parts in an effort to be simple in itself. This makes the results of the parts' interplay with each other more limited. A unit that is only simple in itself has a false simplicity.

Being a nerd, I shall illustrate with a comparison of Super Mario 64 (the original, mind you) and Super Mario Galaxy. For gameplay purposes, consider Mario as a single unit. Powerups are external units that become part of his unit to alter him; and in-stage devices are separate units that direct his actions, respond to them, or perform some degree of action in conjunction with him.

In SM64 Mario has a wide range of moves with which he can conquer the entire game, save for some circumstances that require him to attain one of three powerups. These give him additional attributes, such as flying or sinking in water, without changing his native ability. By contrast, SMG's Mario has only a few moves which are quite limited in themselves; what really perform most actions are in-stage devices that he must trigger, and likewise his mobility is largely directed by devices. There are lots of powerups, almost all of which change his very essence by making him geared toward one thing.

In himself, Mario is apparently a simpler unit in SMG (but what good is it to abstract him from his world?). If both Marios could accomplish all the same things in a game like SM64, the Mario with more moves would seem superfluous. Yet that is part of SM64's beauty: Mario can meet a goal with a variety of methods, and this places power into the hands of the player---a defining quality of good video games. But what's important is that SM64-Mario's more numerous moves do not complicate the structure of the game. As long as the many moves do not exist for their own unique ends, they are not complicating the unit's mode of interaction, just adding to the versatility within that mode.

In SMG, however, Mario's "many moves" are each designed for one-dimensional circumstances and are furthermore removed from Mario himself as they take the forms of powerups and devices. Mario has many things to do only in the form of many individual roads he can take, which ultimately do their own things as he goes through them. Here we see the complex sum of parts producing limited results: everything in SMG, not just Mario, boasts a false simplicity leading to stifled gameplay. SM64 instead provides lots to do by laying all the simple nuances before you, constructing entire worlds from their combinations and leaving you to interact with them as you please. Ultimately, fewer units with wider interplay are better than more units with specific interaction.

All this brings me to my second topic, which is responsible for the falseness of self-simplicity among other things. Not too distant from the "Principle of Simplicity" is the balance of definition, or the degree of fixity in a construction.

As a rule, something should have a sufficient level of establishment to achieve its goal and no more, lest it become restrictive. In the examples above, Mario's powerups, the world design, and the tasks required of the player---that is, the actions he must perform to achieve certain results---are firmly set in SMG. To say they are predetermined would be a misnomer, for everything in a video game, to the extent that it presents and allows a finite amount of material, is so. The real problem is the forced nature of the situation. Mario can accomplish X by Y and Y only. It is merely left to the player to actually perform the action (and overcome any challenge in doing so). This is precisely how Nintendo's aim for increased interaction backfires: they provide so many keys and keyholes that the player has no freedom.

Aiming for the other end of the spectrum is the motion control craze. Consider the hands-free Xbox peripheral, the Kinect sensor. Direct, full-bodied interaction with games is a noble endeavor, but the goal of transcending the barrier between games and reality is flawed. Short of using Inception's dream construction, games will never achieve the limitlessness of real life, just as computers will never be capable of independent thought. The ultimate problem with Kinect is, or will prove to be, a faulty attempt to make interaction unfixed, to remove definition. The premise that you are freed from the constraints of buttons is overridden by the reality that you can still only do a set amount of things a game will understand, though the medium would suggest otherwise. No motion control will completely eliminate defined functions, which is why standard controllers aren't going anywhere for a while. And the sooner developers and consumers recognize this, the less danger there will be of jolting the player out of an experience that was supposed to be immersive.

Between these two extremes is the balance, where definition is welcomed as essential but not allowed to become totalitarian. And the importance of this balance is esthetic as well as practical.

To go beyond the realm of video games, the merits of incomplete definition are perhaps best exemplified in visual art. I don't know if Monet or anyone else said as much, but the best realism is not devoid of impressionism. Reality is heterogeneous: the "natural" look of any object, particularly those occurring in nature themselves and especially in forms of life, comes from a sort of imperfection. The grain in wood is not uniform, and the dancing of fire is unpredictable. One slice of bread is not the same as the next. So it follows that a good painter can replicate a scene with a brush to the point of photo-realism for someone standing at the right distance. The brush's chaos meets the chaos of reality.

This chaos becomes infinitely more significant when compared with graphic art. It is hard to simulate fire and water for a reason. If you'll excuse my return to video games, observe this painting.No remake of Donkey Kong Country would ever look so spectacular, for the brush lends an organic feel that computers, somewhere along the line, are practically incapable of reproducing.

Within graphic art there comes a peculiar application of this "Principle of Undefinition." The resolution of an image is not unlike the example I gave early on of Legos and Duplos. The more pixels, the smaller (and simpler) the units, the more complex the result can be. When representing, say, a rocky terrain with graphics, greater resolution (if utilized correctly) will result in a more realistic image. As a rule; but if you compare the earth of planet Zebes in Super Metroid and in Metroid: Zero Mission, the former will appear more organic despite possessing half the resolution. In comes the Principle of Undefinition to override the Principle of Simplicity. In Super Metroid less of the terrain is clearly established due to the limitations of its pixelation; but those stray pixels and colors that suggest a heterogeneous soil are more effective when the mind interprets the visual and fills in the gaps. A sense of vagueness is pleasing because the imagination sees vagueness in its own clarity.

All these observations suggest to me that our present determination to continuously expand and refine our crafts and technologies is in the end rather self-defeating. We should push forward, indeed; but to do so for its own sake falls to the fallacy that more is better. Nature has it that there is a balance in everything, and at some point we must be willing to retreat in order to achieve the proper equilibrium. Until then, I watch as the world mistakes mass for depth, and wonder how far it will go.
[Image by Orioto from DeviantArt.com]

Symbols of Purity

2010-12-20T10:30:00.003-05:00

My mom used baking soda for some cooking yesterday, and the bag was left on the kitchen island. Looking at the logo, I chuckled again at the statement made by the "Arm & Hammer" slogan: "[This is] the standard of purity."

My first reaction to this is always a smirk at the "manliness" factor, and wonder if a brute stereotype for masculinity is being labeled as "pure." I was joking about the traditional symbol of purity, the lily, pitted against a dude with a mallet, when something struck me (not for the first time, come to think of it).

Joseph was a carpenter.

Unwittingly, the baking soda folks have got it right. Perhaps the idea is that the mechanical use of a hammer is more pure than the assistance of machines, maybe they want you to think of such rawness with regard to the soda because of such a branding; but however true these notions are, the message becomes exponential when applied to the saintly craftsman of the Holy Family. Here was a man pure in every sense of the word, in his labor, in his faith, in his chastity.

So for guys who consider a lily too feminine, an arm and hammer (or carpentering tools of some sort) can indeed serve as the masculine variety. This is not to say the lily is weak, nor that the hammer or saw must be toilsome. As symbols, the analogy is what matters. And here are two symbols for the perfectly pure parents of Christ: the flower of Mary and the tools of Joseph.

It would be awesome if the latter became officially recognized as such.

Wanderings of the Open Mind (or I Don't Have Any Good Tags For This)

2010-12-07T23:26:00.009-05:00

Weak understanding is a poisonous thing.

Whenever I try to discuss a subject with somebody of a different mindset, I come away feeling defeated. Not because I lost or was proven wrong, but because I know I inadequately argued my views, which led to an anticlimactic end to the topic as a mutual act of leaving the tug-of-war rope draped haphazardly over the mud pit.

I often find myself musing over the matter for ages afterward, trying to understand both the argument and the truth of the subject in question. On one hand, there's the constant obstacle of articulation, a shortcoming of my mind to give form to a complex issue outside of my head, no matter how thoroughly understood it may be (or have been thought out in the past) on the inside. But there's more than that. The other hand holds my stripping the issue down, trying to probe it from an assumptionless angle to find why what I always held as true is really the truth and how it might be recognized from the opposing side. Eventually I question the truth of my own beliefs, because I look so long and hard through the other person's lens.

I've always come back to my knowledge of the truth, usually through the help of discussion with peers such as S.Cobbler. When my own grappling with a question leads to uncertainty, a sure course of action is to pose it bluntly to another and get a lecture. I then return to the understanding I had beforehand, reassured and affirmed in my knowledge, which may be deeper or stronger than before.

This path has struck me as somewhat dangerous, perhaps humiliating or revelatory of my own intellectual instability. Any way I cut it, it has a bothersome element to it. But when I look at my comebacks, my ability to perceive the truth in the end when it is re-presented to me, I know the problem isn't my smarts. In fact, I credit no deficiency for my forays into confusion and uncertainty; rather, I blame what is most properly a virtue on my part. In a natural effort to avoid dismissal of the other side, I try to understand why they don't see my point. Empathetically, you could say, I put myself in their shoes because I want them to fit mine.

Virtues can be excessive, and I don't doubt that is to fault when I lose my way in these situations. I become like my opponents, to a point, rejecting what they would reject, following their prerogatives for finding the truth. Yet I know something inside that screams I---they---are missing a key point, but it often takes a friend to uncover it for me at that stage. I never truly stop believing what I held true, but I can't figure it out from the perspective of the other person. That, of course, is why they hold a different opinion, why they fail to grasp my argument, why I cannot make my belief acceptable to them.

I have felt, in a childlike foolishness, that the truth should be visible---to the point of being obvious---to everyone. The fact that one man can see it means others should be just as capable. If the truth is there, logical and understandable, one should recognize it as the truth, right? And yet some people can have the truth staring them in the face and they completely disregard it. Maddening as this is, I must realize it is not my fault. Yes, I could do a better job of explaining things at times, but ultimately the choice is theirs, whether or not to believe anything. It would be machinelike to always follow the path of the most truth. It would mean no free will.

Granted, it stings to find good arguments after the discussion is over. That fuller, renewed grasp of the subject makes me wish I could challenge my opponent anew, to start the debate from the beginning. Whatever tools I was missing before would at the very least let my points be complete and well-defended, so I would not feel that defeat of inadequacy when they remained unconvinced. At most, I could say what I should have said before had my approach or articulation not failed me, squashing the rebuttals that are obviously flawed, putting them down as easily as I should have. Alas, my best arguments are not won in the presence of others, for better or worse.

I'm not dumb. I just tend to lose my grip on my sword because I face my opponents without gloves. Sure, it's a lack of armor; but with gloves I couldn't feel the warmth of their hands when I shake them. The cons: I am more vulnerable and less effective in my duels. The pros: I can be certain that I'm not the "closed-minded" party; I can honestly say "yes" to those who ask if I've ever really stepped back and thought about my beliefs. I have more than they could realize.

"It was in a book I read."

2010-10-24T14:04:00.012-04:00

I'm not exactly the passionate writer. However, I decided last night that I want to write a book; a useful, information-packed book. It will give the reader the power of unverifiable credibility, and Dogbert isn't even involved.

For who said the information must be real?

The book in question will have two main features:

1) It will contain thousands of made-up statements.
2) It will be titled, "a book I read," in that casing.

The purpose is, obviously, for people to buy this book, read its contents, and proclaim those statements with the 100% true citation of "a book I read."

A feature I have not yet decided on would be a blank page for the owner to write in their own statements, magically giving them credibility.

I'm somewhat surprised Dogbert has not thought of this himself. Ironically, this morning's comics contained an acknowledgement of the flawed reality that makes my idea naught but a joke:

But as a joke, you must admit the Wikipedia article for it will be twice the fun.

SMB2 Inception

2010-09-22T08:46:00.009-04:00

You've all seen Inception, right? You've all played Super Mario Bros. 2, right? You realize the connection is better inferred for oneself than explained, right? Behold a 20-second video and an original cartoon on the subject!

Calvin on Facebook

2010-09-01T20:32:00.014-04:00

Not really much to say here. I joined a website, not Facebook, and whatever that sounds like, I'm not a hypocrite; but that's information for another time, another post (someday when I actually make a commitment to this fraction of a pensieve I call a blog). Suffice it to say, I once asked for a virtual showing of hands for not doing Facebook, and after a decent turnout and some joking, I whipped up the following strip edit. It's not cut-and-pasted lettering from other strips like the "All Your Base..." Spaceman Spiff panel at the bottom of the post bar (did I ever mention you can share that with people? Go do that. Getting a pic all over the web would be more realistic than pointing people here at this point), but that's an awful lot of text to stitch together and I don't find it necessary for the joke.

Why I'm going to get a PS3

2010-05-10T22:10:00.015-04:00

I decided a while back that I wanted my own game console to play if I go live with my brother in Indiana to go to college or anything. I compared the Xbox 360 and the PS3 along with their game libraries and decided the PS3 had more that I'd want, including:

Current-gen games

Free internet

Previous-gen games

The last one, of course, recently changed. I checked out everything I would want on a backwards compatibility list and they were all covered--then realized the list was moot with the new PS3 Slim. That's okay, actually, because buying a PS2 Slim for $100 would guarantee previous-gen playability and ultimately cost less than keeping an Xbox Live subscription anyway.

Now, I've always been a Nintendo fanboy; and like most Nintendo fanboys, I hated when others favored Sony because they had "real games" that weren't just "for kids." The trouble is, those age-old accusations are gaining more and more truth as time wears on. I'm not saying Nintendo needs to make more M-rated games or anything like that, but they're trying a little too hard to assume that there are new gamers whose only way to get into their franchises is through increasingly dumbed-down everything. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't buy into the philosophy that novelty, real or faked, makes games automatically worthwhile by way of graphics (no-brainer), storyline (Spirit Tracks comes to mind) or gameplay (gimmickry comes to mind).

To spare you from my potential to write a thorough analysis of this issue as a ten-page essay (a "proof," as I would say in logic or philosophy), let me use the following videos to point out a simple fact: Sony is on Nintendo's turf, and darn it, they're doing a better job.

Those are two of the games I intend to get. I may get LittleBig Planet while I wait for LBP2. Then there's Joe Danger, the enhanced Exitebike that Nintendo never made, and a nifty action-puzzle game called echochrome. Final Fantasy XIII is obvious, and after SC played and liked the unique RPG Star Ocean (thanks to emulation and translation patching) I figured I'd go for the whole series. I also became attracted to stealth series Metal Gear Solid when I learned about its storyline and had conversations with SC about its drawing on American culture in the reconnaissance war zone. I recently got my hands on the Metal Gear Solid: Essential Collection (containing the series through the PS2) just as the prices for it began the "rare and out of print" ascent, snagging it for $40 instead of the base $30--still a good deal. For the sake of the old Metal Gears 1 & 2 I purchased the special edition of MGS3 from the nerd-run small business at nintendosforsale.com, which was the best bargain I could find at the time. I also possess copies of Chrono Cross and Mega Man Legends, the latter of which I got years ago since my eldest brother left his PS1 and I happened to see the game at GameStop for nine bucks back when they carried PS1 games at all. As per my standards of reliability vs. practicality, the only items above that I own used copies of are MML and the expanded MGS3.

Needless to say, I'm getting a head start on securing the games I want. They don't stick around as long as the systems; although I ought to get my PS2 as soon as I can. So goodbye, Nintendo; you no longer provide what I look for in games with enough consistency for me to stick with you after I move and leave behind the family Nintendo merchandise.

Strength of (and through) the Will

2010-05-04T16:50:00.006-04:00

Before I begin, let me point out that I am not a theologian, nor am I well versed in the psychosomatic phenomena of human nature. I don't really know the ins and outs of what follows, but I have gathered some facts that lead to an interesting question about the nature of man.

When Adam and Eve sinned they lost all the super- and preternatural powers God gave them, and their natural abilities were greatly weakened. Not only did mankind become mortal, susceptible to pain, and prone to countless diseases and defects, but its physical and mental powers were greatly handicapped in themselves. The strength of the body is comparably poor to the pre-fall human, as is the integrity of the soul--the intellect and will.

Now I ask, how much of our bodily weakness stems from the weakness of the soul? Man is a union of matter and spirit, the body and soul. The soul is the ultimate principle of life and therefore the "first act" of all powers, the root of all human abilities. The weakening of the soul, then, would cause a weakening of physical powers; however, the body itself can be (and was, through sin) independently weakened as well. The question is, how much weakness is in which?

I cannot jump out of a two-story window and keep running. I would categorize that as weakness of the body, for I could will myself to do it and would still be injured. But what if a person were invincibly determined, and their will was set undivided to performing such an action?

The curious fact is that this has actually happened. A comedian named Mike Birbiglia tells a story of doing it in his sleep due to a neurological disorder. He explains that he has a condition that is essentially a lack of a chemical produced by the brain that paralyzes the body during sleep. What I find most interesting is his mentioning that people with this disorder are known to do things that would ordinarily be impossible. For example, Mike dreamt that a missile was headed at him while he stayed in a hotel, so he promptly leaped out of his window--which was closed and on the second floor. He crashed through the pane and fell onto the front lawn, stumbled, and then kept running! He took himself to the hospital after waking up, and the doctor was surprised he was alive.

This scenario suggests the reality of the dangerous idea that "it's all in the mind." Certainly the body has limitations; so how can this be explained? Perhaps in the same way many desperate feats of superhuman strength have: the miracle of an adrenaline rush. Adrenaline enhances muscular ability (among other things) so that a person can confront extreme situations; it's the same response that lets many animals stay alive in the wild. But does it allow the muscles to be exercised beyond their limit, or merely reach their full potential? How would this function if the body were not in a weakened state from original sin? And where would the mind come into play, in that case? All the current evidence says that the mind is barely involved; it is a reflex that comes without bidding. However, it can be controlled in the way of limiting or preventing it; adrenaline tends to come hand in hand with fear or excitement, and certain military personnel are trained to suppress these so that their concentration isn't impaired.

All of this seems to say that the body is capable through hormonal enhancement, and the will has little to do with it. By the same token, though, it is probably only meant for the occasional circumstances in which it has been known to be naturally put to use. In the long run our muscles are not built for great strain, as evidenced by the destruction of prolonged steroid use; athletes who take steroids often do what their bodies are simply not made for, and though the steroids make it possible, it is seriously damaging.

There is proof, then, that the body has limitations, and exceeding them is not altogether healthy. Just how limited the body is is still a mystery. A friend of mine was recently talking about an Indian (I think) who learned to psychologically transcend nature. He could go weeks without food and survive in harsh climates because he simply didn't allow it to affect him. This obviously screams, "Legend!" but there is some degree of truth to it. Often we can withstand more than we think, either because we make ourselves or we have to.

I realize I haven't made any conclusions here, but it's definitely some food for thought. Is the key to ability more in the mind or in the body? Someday I'd like to know.

The Best Football Game That Doesn't Exist

2010-05-02T16:22:00.004-04:00

I don't play sports games, but I would definitely play this.

Plays of Plays

2010-05-02T15:45:00.009-04:00

Last week I had a creative writing assignment for American literature class. I had to write a short story, a poem, or a play about something American. My mind remained blank up through the deadline for formulating a basic idea; then when my teacher asked us to hand in our concepts I ripped out a sheet of paper and wrote, "Play about a student having to do this assignment. Dialogue about American stuff."

I successfully wrote the play from that single premise. The student struggles to write something with meaning while meeting the assigned requirements, commenting on the general mind of society when it comes to producing individual works.

My classmates thought it was ingenius, mostly because the kid writes a play about a kid who writes a play about a kid writing a play to infinity.

MGS ROM Hacking Support

2010-04-27T18:34:00.007-04:00

I edited this comic fragment to represent the snobbishness that experienced ROM hackers show towards new people like me.

The original comic, an outrageously hilarious synopsis of the first Metal Gear Solid, can be found at the author's site. A fair warning, however: there is occasional material in the range of crass to somewhat obscene, and if I were you, I wouldn't read the comments. That said, feel free to give youself a laughter headache.

Bizarro Shakespearoth

2010-04-20T19:05:00.003-04:00

What. The. Heck.

I suppose this is for nerds, but certainly of a different kind than I am.

Note to Nerds:

2010-04-09T15:53:00.005-04:00

Some "waste of time" entertainment forms contain worthwhile intellectual establishments. The comic strip Frazz helped me dominate today's literature class, for example.

Never underestimate the substance of a comic strip -- or, for that matter, a video game.

Number Scales

2010-03-30T16:04:00.008-04:00

Whenever I go to the doctor for anything involving pain, they require a statement of how bad the pain is "on a scale of one to ten." This drives my brain up the wall every time for the five seconds before I answer.

I have to calculate two things: 1) how much pain I'm in, and 2) what to translate that to for the sake of the doctor.

If you just think about that for a minute, the problem should be obvious. The metric system exists so that, albeit with some conversions, any general physical measurement can be expressed in universally recognizable terms. Doctors do the same with understanding their patients' subjective conditions via the pain scale. However, the key word here is "subjective."

For starters, it's a principle of philosophy that every individual's "feelings" are unique, and nobody knows exactly how another feels any sense or emotion. Therefore it is impossible to convey pain felt with complete accuracy (by corollary, the number scale may be the best we can get, but that doesn't lessen its flaws). Then to ensure adequate communication the patient would ideally have to know their doctor on a personal level, to be familiar with how they would interpret the information. Likewise the doctor should know their patient and how they would rationalize the formulation of their rating, taking into account their pain tolerance, if they're the type who never give the highest rating out of acknowledgement that it could be higher, etc.

Unfortunately these tend to be mere guesswork (if given any thought at all), and the combined displacement from both parties carries the potential for misunderstanding. It's not likely to cause improper treatment; but it always occurs to me that I may be giving rather groundless information because I have no idea what others typically feel in such a condition, don't know what "the most pain I could endure" is, and so on.

Indie Singer and Final Fantasy Fan

2010-03-27T12:59:00.009-04:00

I'm pleased to present something, or rather someone, I recently stumbled upon in the music world. Kate Covington (or katethegreat19) is a singer/songwriter who creates beautiful lyric arrangements, specializing in Final Fantasy. One can find countless musicians on YouTube performing whatever they are fans of, but Kate is one of those gems who goes about her work like a professional cover artist, or rather is on the very path of being one. She directs her own choir and has successfully struggled to copyright and release her songs.

Her style is one that I have a particular weakness for, that of mystical sweetness and wonder which I cannot fully describe; here is the video I first encountered (lyrics provided in the video info):

I wish her the best of luck. (She has one of the few modern singing voices that I don't have tolerance issues with, after all!)

[Kate's YouTube channel - more links from there]

I Got Spirit Tracks

2010-03-23T12:08:00.009-04:00

Sounds like a psychological condition.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks was on sale at Target today, and I had a couple gift cards to use. Soon I'll have completed every Zelda game to date (again), which is bound to be better than resorting to the über-easy and linear Super Mario Galaxy to stave off boredom.

Newer trailers have revealed things possibly (probably) more bizarre than Link's train, which alone made me scoff at the game. I don't even know what to say about these (go watch a trailer yourself if you want an idea), but as far as the plot goes, I can say this: I doubt it will work unless the kingdom with the disappearing Spirit Tracks is some foreign land outside of Hyrule, because there's no plausible way Hyrule could have had them and a locomotive all this time without there being some legend about them. A game cannot tie into a string of sequential storylines and introduce something out of nowhere that has supposedly been there for ages. Majora's Mask works because Link finds himself in a strange land. Minish Cap works because it is completely independent of all other games. Spirit Tracks must necessarily fall into the Majora's Mask and Phantom Hourglass category, because it's a direct sequel to the latter and continues Link's adventures after Wind Waker.

Unfortunately, this is not likely because the train has some form of the Hyrule crest right on it's front. In any case, my previous rant all but guarantees that it won't be as good a story as Phantom Hourglass; or at the very least, that it will be a better pastime to make fun of it than to rationalize it with its predecessor. I'll only know for sure after I play it.

Super Metroid Intro Fail

2010-03-22T19:43:00.006-04:00

I was just trying out a Super Metroid hacking utility, and apparently the text editing has more restrictions than they let on.If you look closely, the text is at the top, reduced to a ghost by two cutscenes running simultaneously. Samus and the exploding Mother Brain never went away from the first scene, then the intro skipped to the last scene, which stuck as the final line of text went across the top. I only did what the instructions said I could, and look what happened! It appears the lab computers are blowing up. Sometimes I'm surprised this machine doesn't do so itself.

Random thoughts on the health care debate:

2010-03-22T00:22:00.007-04:00

I knew the bill was dangerous when all I heard from the proponents was that the current system is messed up. That kind of logic going into the bill is a bright red flag. Changing a bad situation doesn't mean you'll make it better! This is like using Lysol on raw chicken instead of cooking it to eliminate the bacteria. It's the wrong fix, and we'll suffer greatly from it.

Tonight all I heard from the liberals was "We're doing the right thing!" Reeeally? And you're a great sorcerer. And I'm the king of Cashmere. (~Madmartigan, Willow) A statement that bland isn't even an argument. This is a lame attempt to gain support by easing people's consciences through unaccounted moral support -- empty assurance at it's best.

Pelosi's laugh is unprofessional and unnerving. I must photoshop her head onto Dolores Umbridge.

"Americans will come to remember this day!" You bet they will. Only they won't care about your "justice" and whatnot; when the country is in an even worse situation than it is now, they will remember this day and despise you for it.

The old computer is back up.

2010-03-21T15:24:00.007-04:00

And now it's running Windows XP, which I don't like as well as 2000, with the exception of a handful of programs running inherently faster. At any rate, I now have access to my ideas and ambitions of old, though they are amidst virtual cobwebs now.

***FLASH***
The computer just hallucinated that the shift key was being held constantly. Then it deleted everything I was typing and tried to navigate away from this web page. After logging out, logging back on was impossible. A reboot was necessary to neutralize the threat.

Sooooooooo. This kind of stuff is why I'm going to buy a Macbook. Plus, by the time I get stuff sorted out from the long period of downtime and the randomly corrupting transition to XP, I might as well have waited to get my own computer and hand-pick the stuff I want to transfer, enabling a fresh and uncluttered start. Such would also make it simpler to deal with the programs, etc. I have that are now a version or two behind.

Anyway, it's now at least possible for me to blog should I have the time and mind to, but I can't promise anything as my personal projects are still going to be on hold for the most part. I also apologize for all the stuff that I would have blogged when I couldn't. Some great (and original) material, from jokes to serious rationalizations, never made it here, but the moments have past and the most practical thing I can do now is just let the missed be missed.

On a personal note, my life in general has been in a rut for some time, but there are signs of it finally getting better. I mention this in part because one's psychological state has almost as much affect on blogging as computer issues do. To be honest, I envy the first months of my blog. I desire the state of life I was in then, with freedom and creativity flowing betwixt the banks of responsibility and well-being. I hope to arrive at that stream once more, but the mist from the mountains of college and adulthood change obscures my vision. A lamp dances through the fog, but I never find myself catching its guiding ray. The most solid object is that of a side-road that would bear me off to the detour of a fifth year in high school; and though I choose to walk it, I cannot now discern what the road is made of. It seems to shift as a gaze upon it, and at times I wonder if the distortion results from heat waves that would burn my feet. I'll take the burns if I must, trusting that a cool pond lies somewhere along the path.

(I am sick of American literature.)

Computers are even less predictable than my life.

2010-02-23T13:20:00.004-05:00

So, I haven't been able to do ANYTHING blog-wise because the computer inexplicably ceased to connect to any secure sites. Now, all of a sudden, I can access any https AND the parental controls seem to have ceased restricting my browsing (if altogether I dare not explore, but I can get to some sites that aren't really bad but have been blocked for one reason or another -- like brawlsnapshots.com, for one).

Given that my life is too hectic to do any more than write up this little complaint and disprove rumors of my death, I am actually annoyed that it's now even possible to get on with organizing my list of "to-blogs." It's just another distraction at the moment!

NES Games Are Super-Resilient

2010-01-11T15:43:00.005-05:00

I know it's been all video games here lately, but hey, I'm a nerd with a currently disorganized life and VG stuff is easy to share -- provided the audience is receptive. So here's to posting stuff on a blog that only four people and a couple gamers ever read, because I can.

Behold another reason to be an old-school gamer.

Childhood Games

2010-01-03T20:11:00.004-05:00

My dad was talking the other day about growing up in his family, and how he sort of gave his older brother a run for his money regarding being the top boy. "However," he said, "when we'd play Batman and Robin, he was always Batman and I was always Robin."

Interesting comparison. When SC and I were kids we'd play spoken text-adventure games, and he was always the narrator and I the player. Forget who knows how to use the Batarang, I had to deal with reverse- deus ex machina.

Dad should have known how nerdy we were back then.

Happy New(?) Year!

2010-01-01T01:35:00.007-05:00

Apologies to non-VG-nerds =)

The Right Strategy

2009-12-26T23:12:00.005-05:00

My brothers and I just spent the evening playing Star Fox: Assault. I was rather nightmarish as three of us played; but when a fourth person joined in, I began having much more trouble. It drove me nuts, but not nearly as much as the discussion S.Cobb and I had.

I tried to explain why I didn't enjoy the four-player match, and it culminated in an argument over how four players is experientially different than three. Setting aside such issues as whether I am a sore loser or just don't like getting blown up (and how points versus lives matters or how to get the kills you need -- please leave them at rest, SC!), my problem was that there was more to contend with in 4-player, and I had a hard time with it.

I put forth that there are more people to dodge, more people to shoot, more people to keep track of in stats: overall the mayhem increases. Cobb argued that while there are more people for you to deal with, there are more of them to keep each other busy, so what you face individually is no more dense.

He pointed out that he would get shot up just as much in battles with fewer people, and by personal experience there isn't a great difference in strategy as long as you are getting shot and have to shoot others. So how come I had a harder time when he didn't? "You must have been doing something wrong."

Annoying as this explanation is, I realized a certain quality about it. Most simply, I can turn it back on him. He must have been doing something wrong if he didn't have an easier time in 3-player. Or else I was doing something right, that I was better. Of course, I know he'll say he had to deal with me in greater frequency, and I'm the admitted best at the game.

But back to the point: what is the "right" way to do things? Most will agree that there is no single one; you do what works for you. Evidently we have two different approaches, both valid equations, but with disproportionate results depending on the variables. For me there is a need for significant adjustment in how I handle fighting more or less opponents. That is always how it is for any game, in some degree.

I conclude that my problem was lack of experience. It had been a very long time since we'd played the game, and the immediate experience I had was in 3-player. As I can no longer go into a 4-player match as the expected winner, I'll just have to re-formulate how I play those.

Of course, I'm the guy whose gaming skill has the trade-off of extreme accustomization, like being so connected to the controls that I have difficulty adjusting to which fires missiles instead of jumping in another game. So as long as I'm not too lazy to try, my siblings will have a while to enjoy winning. = )

"Gigalypuff" Brawl Glitch

2009-12-21T01:07:00.007-05:00

I learned of this glitch rather recently, thanks to seeing it used in various snapshots on brawlsnapshots.com, and I just got home from a party where I had the privilege of showing it off; so while it's on my mind I'll go ahead and post it, lest it join the league of neglected blogging topics.

If you are inside of the section of the Bridge of Eldin when it gets restored, your character gets bumped to the top. Let this happen to Jigglypuff when she's in the middle of her final smash, and it stops the FS process, leaving her enlarged.

Yoshi eating her in this state results in size multiplication.

This method can be used with other characters to achieve different results -- R.O.B. attaining an eternal FS is the only other one I currently know of. Try it out, it's crazy!

P.S. The above snapshots site is a neat and creative place, albeit subject to community vulgarity, both in pics and language. If you just go to the site and stay in the list of "featured shots," you should be safe from most stuff, as these are moderated. I suggest not reading the tags or the comments, just the title and description(/joke/explanation) for each shot.

Mario Kart Love Song

2009-12-13T14:18:00.005-05:00

Well, with over four million views, I'm considerably late; but I finally got around to watching this video of an original song about love and Mario Kart. I don't remember why I didn't watch it when I first found it, but anyway, it's pretty good. Seriously.

Mega Man 10

2009-12-12T14:09:00.005-05:00

It's official (again): Mega Man X does NOT mean 10.

MM10 is already coming, complete with NES style, intentionally bad promo art, and a robot master that makes me "facepalm."

By the way, there is no way this robot virus can be the Sigma Virus, people! Don't even THINK about it! And I kind of hope the third playable character is Bass or Duo; I don't trust Capcom to invent a new one, and an MMX character would be the end of the world.

Nerd + Too Much Time = ...

2009-12-11T16:53:00.005-05:00

This was part of a comment on a site that I will probably blog about sometime. While I have a good amount of other stuff to organize and post when I have the time, I just had to share this now.

"I did a little math today and it would seem that the average adult male eats roughly the equivalent of a tenth of a gallon of gasoline every day. According to a quick Google and a little more math, the average cookie is worth something like 0.0027 gallons.

We burn energy at a rate of 100-200 Watts. Which as it turns out is roughly equivalent to the power used by my computer.

Therefore I conclude that my computer is a person too, which is why I leave its cookies enabled."

I don't need coffee. I need an elixir.

2009-10-22T10:54:00.003-04:00

Most people can jump-start their day with a hot cup of bad-tasting caffeine. If drowsiness were my only problem, I might too.

I only got half a night's sleep in all because of my diabetes. First, my blood sugar was low, then it shot high for no reason, and then it was a bit low and wouldn't come up. On top of that, my continuous glucose monitor started acting up, waking me up every hour for, if not my low sugar, a sensor error.

This morning I got up (late) and was 72. I had some carbs and took a shower. When I got out, I was 201.

So here I am, with a big day of homework ahead of me, tired and with high blood sugar. The most annoying thing right now is that I'm hungry. With high sugar, there is little I can eat without making it worse; I really have to wait for it to come down first.

Coffee? Heck, if being alert would solve everything else, I'd go for it. I don't know how many carbs coffee has, but I doubt it would help my 201. This kind of situation reveals how overrated that black stuff is. I'll drink coffee regularly when someone invents a panacea creamer.

Life Update

2009-10-19T23:26:00.006-04:00

I really don't know how to go about this, so I'll just list two major points:

School
Main computer is busted

That pretty much sums up why I haven't been able to do a lot lately, which is a leading factor in my lack of blogging. No e-mail, no ROM hacking, no access to my idea files, etc. I'll try to suppress the idealist in me and just start posting as if I didn't have some dozens of things I would like to remember and organize first.

So without further ado....

Zelda, Halo Style

2009-08-23T17:42:00.004-04:00

I came upon this video a couple of years ago and had forgotten about it until a friend, whom I had shown it to, mentioned it yesterday. Halo Custom Edition, a PC expansion for the first Halo game, allowed fans to design their own maps, character skins, etc., and I like this even more than the Mines of Moria stage somebody created for the Jedi Knight games.

A Typical Kroger Trip

2009-08-19T19:54:00.016-04:00

I went to Kroger with my mom the other day. As usual, I did only two things: walk and make picky comments about the products.

"'Baby Peeled Carrots'? It should be 'Peeled Baby Carrots.' They don't grow peeled; these aren't peeled carrots that are still tiny, they're tiny carrots that are peeled."

"Oh, look, next to 'I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!' they have Yoda's version, 'Butter It's Not.' Except Yoda is actually admitting it's a substitute."

On top of that, while my mom knows the different brands, the price variations for the other quantities of the product, and all the which-one's-cheaper-at-which-store-in-what-size-of-this-brand-with-that-whatever, I turn down the aisle and go, "Hey, we need that! *grab*"

SMB1 By Webcam

2009-08-08T04:13:00.006-04:00

This is one of those things I've been meaning to post since ... before I started my blog, sort of. Anyway, this is clever if it's fake and awesome if it's real; such a thing is certainly possible. Judging from the physics of Mario and the behavior of the objects (blocks, in particular), I suppose he coded this mostly from scratch, which is quite impressive.

PS - The related video of level 1-1 in Line Rider is nicely done, too.

Paying Attention? Just Checking.

2009-07-17T23:13:00.005-04:00

Two minutes ago I was having a conversation with my younger brother, which ended as follows.

Me: "The meaning of 'geek' has changed a bit since we have the word 'nerd.' Right, dad?"
My dad (on blackberry): "Mm-hmm."
Me: "And if you spill milk, mold grows on the floor, right, dad?"
My dad: "... What??"
Me (laughing with my brother): "I was just seeing if you were paying attention."

Japanese Jump

2009-07-11T19:38:00.003-04:00

This is how I jumped into the swimming pool the other day.

What did that say?

2009-07-02T17:25:00.010-04:00

Every now and then I see something I would like to take a picture of, but I don't have a camera to do so. Fortunately, all such things that I've seen today are in words, so I can easily share the heightening ridiculousness of them.

First, a sign at a McDonald's building read: "Handicapped Ramp." My reaction: "The ramp is handicapped? It's not in a wheelchair; what's its problem?"

Similarly, I was looking for weed killer in our garage and instead found a windshield washing fluid, which claimed to be a "bug cleaner." My reaction: "No, it's a windshield washer. I don't want to clean the bugs, I want to clean the windshield of them."

And now, the one that absolutely drove me nuts: a LEGO magazine ad for a Bob the Builder show with 3D glasses described it as "4D." My highly predictable reaction: ... never mind, it's highly predictable. I don't need to go on about TV and the dimensions for the second time in a year (the first being about the Super Bowl commercial for a show going 3D in which the guy hits the wrong button and they turn flat, and he says, "Oops. That's 1D." Oh, hey, I should have posted that back then ...).

In case of fire ...

2009-06-28T22:05:00.010-04:00

I recently had an appointment down at the hospital, and I noticed that the sign by the parking garage elevator had been subjected to this funny, and possibly ironic, doodle.Side note to you gamers: the flame on the right (which the camera phone couldn't get with the rest comprehensible) appears to have been made into a flower. Is the man with the cigarette responsible for the blaze, or can it be traced back to a certain Italian plumber?

It was a bright and stormy night ...

2009-06-26T12:01:00.003-04:00

Man, that was quite the thunderstorm last night! For at least three hours, there was bright lightning flashing constantly, at times accompanied by really loud thunder. The lightning just wouldn't quit; there were rarely any bolts to see, but the whole outdoors lit up in rapid, succesive bursts every two seconds or less.

I wanted to stick warning signs on the windows like you see when you turn on a video game: "If you suffer from epilepsy or have experienced seizures from repeated flashes...."

The quick brown fox?

2009-06-23T22:30:00.006-04:00

Remember the pangram, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"? I was just checking out what's new at a certain ROM hacking site, and there was a new section for font files to insert into games. I clicked on one to see what exactly they were, and it happened to use a hilarious example screenshot of the font in Final Fantasy 6. Too bad it doesn't use every letter of the alphabet.

Reality Isn't Virtual Enough

2009-06-10T22:06:00.015-04:00

Well, now that I have time to blog that coincides with the internet connection working and my brother not using the computer, I've got something interesting to post.

It seems Microsoft decided to top the Wii as far as interactivity. Other videos show different features and ways they are put to use, but I have a comment about what is shown in this particular one. I think it points to a problem with our society.

The designer in the video stressed two things: the ability to hold a relationship with this virtual person, and how lifelike the system is. My first thought (or perhaps second, after "wow") was: "Why not meet someone in real life?" We (as a culture) don't interact with our fellow man enough, and when we do it is far too often through some online organization. It's rather ironic that the activities with Milo are, or at least can be, so organic. And if one can recognize the value of such experiences, they ought to put the stress on reality, this incredible, nonfictional world in which we live. It reminds me of parts of the movie Wall-E ; such as the moment when two of the computer-rules-their-lives people realize there's an amazing life to take part in, if they simply turned off their screens and looked around; or the captain's utter fascination with farming, dancing, and other activities familiar to the human race back on Earth long ago.

Of course, a common opinion is likely to be that Milo "cares about you, no matter what" and is "a friend without problems." The appeal of this idea is dangerous, to be frank. It is not wise to attach yourself to someone who, artificial intelligence notwithstanding, is not real. As God made us a social people, we are here to walk together.

I'm not saying the technology is bad. Indeed, it is my hope that it will serve as an awakening, a reminder of the importance of these things. As for Milo himself, you can have as much fun with him as you like; just never forget that his existence is a fantasy.

Clean What Won't Be Seen

2009-05-24T13:18:00.006-04:00

My second-eldest brother is having a friend from out-of-state over, and my chore this week happens to be trash+bathroom. So I just finished cleaning the bathroom, as per my mother's wishes. I must admit, the sink and mirror look much nicer; but as I was wiping the floor down and did around the back of the toilet, I questioned the necessity. One would have to purposely look for filth back there to notice any. This reminded me, as many happenings do, of a piece from a book I've read. This one is "The Good Bad Boy," an enjoyable little read that is supposed to be the diary of a boy in the eighth grade. The passage I thought of goes:

"Why do people have to clean the whole house when they expect company? Father Foley will only see the dining room and parlor. Besides, Father Foley is coming to eat, not to look for dirt."

If C3PO Talked Like Dr. Suess...

2009-05-21T20:57:00.006-04:00

"I would not be flown here or there, I would not be flown anywhere! I do not like to fly, oh no, I do not like to, Han Solo!"

"Wockets? In our pockets? We're in danger! I must tell the others -- OH NO! I'M IN SOCKS!!"

"They're heading in this direction. What are we going to do? We'll be sent to the waiting place and wait for who knows what!"

"We'll have no more of this 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' gibberish! And don't talk to me of your hunch either!"

Squiggly, Green Underlines: I'm not sure what you wrote is what I think you wanted me to read.

2009-05-19T22:47:00.015-04:00

Yep, sometimes I just can't ignore MS Word's grammar check. These occurred when I was typing my chemistry term paper some time ago.

"The Real Me"

2009-05-05T16:07:00.004-04:00

I recently observed an IM conversation my elder brother was having with one of his friends. They were discussing temperaments and which they were. I had never really taken much interest before then in what temperament I was, and I began to get curious. However, my road has since been becoming rather bumpy, and I've had the tendency to get pretty down about life. I realized that it would be unwise to bother looking into my personality and give it a tag, as I'd likely come out with an incorrect, not to mention undesirable, conclusion. That reminded me of what my brother's friend wrote: her secondary temperament was one thing, but she wished it was another. It only now strikes me that, outside of the temperamental study, I have been making the mistake of viewing myself in that manner: "I wish I was."

The bumps in my road have really been my own unwillingness to accept myself. I've always been a bit insecure about my reputation, but for the most part that was the post-relational doubts on behavior and how I came across. My parents have repeatedly assured me throughout life that my friends probably wonder the same things about themselves and not to worry about it. Then, over the past few months, I became aware of the fact that, in my eyes, I'd been letting my life play it's usual routines without bothering to think about a bigger picture and exercise control over where I wanted to go in the long run. From there I fell into a mess of anxiety and depression and began wishing things were different.

Mind you, nothing had really changed; I was just discontented with how things were, how they had become without my paying attention. My temperament, though I didn't think about it in such a specific way, was not ideal. I wanted to be a different person. Not that I disliked my good points, when I looked at them; but it seemed I'd let myself develop without some awareness or drive that I wanted. I think what triggered these pessimistic realizations was meeting someone who made me look at my future, the rest of my life as an adult, which I suddenly could see was approaching way too fast. I must admit, I'm scared of what the future holds, and I don't know where to go. All I know is I can't hide. And I've questioned my ability to go anywhere as who I am. My struggles and faults have hung in front of my face in a paralyzing fashion.

I think back to my philosophy teacher distinguishing between reputation and character: reputation is what people think of you, while character is who you are. And he commented that his reputation is likely much better than his character. I can hear him saying, "If people knew who I really am, they wouldn't stick around me." I'm sure he was referring, in all seriousness, to whatever private issues he has as a fallen human. But I let that thought go too far in relation to myself. Honestly, who would want to have anything to do with me? I doubt anyone who knows me thinks ill of me: I'm always complimented on my smarts and sense of humor; I have a definite gift for making people laugh. Even my recent hardships have not had much bearing on how I relate to other people. Yet my insecurity when I'm alone has increased. "If they only knew the real me..."

But is that actually a truthful assessment? A spy's secret activities are opposite to the appearance he upholds; one life is a complete fake, a cover-up for his true self. That's not how I am. The very fact that I am distressed is an indication that I know what's right and care about it being that way. To judge my private imperfections as my true character would be as foolish as to mistake a current downswing in my outlook on life for my true temperament. My friends probably know a great deal of the real me.

Unfortunately, I expect too much of myself, staking too much on the idea that I can change; then, when things don't improve, I get down on myself. My dad summed up this problem quite well one time when we were talking: he said, "You want to be a saint now." I do, and yet I haven't had enough faith in myself to get anywhere. The best relief I get tends to be not thinking about anything, escaping the world and myself by wasting the days playing video games, working on piano compositions when I know they're going nowhere, or else doing nothing at all. But life won't stay on hold for me like that. I'm growing up, even though I'd really like to do as Hobbes does when life seems too complicated: take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner.

I hope I haven't come off as stewing in self-pity or anything. I've needed to look at myself as I would if I were someone else. I have a rather compassionate and understanding attitude toward others, and provide encouragement where they'll accept it. For some reason, this doesn't hold true for myself, as I'm almost predisposed to blame myself and get depressed. In order to believe in the great possibilities the future holds, I have to run a logical analysis of my situation from an slightly third-person view. I believe things are getting better, but I need to remain optimistic and give my wholehearted trust to God that everything will work out. While it has bothered me that I've seemingly been short-sighted about life, I think it would be best for me right now to not try to look at a much bigger picture.

So I conclude these thoughts. I write them not for your sympathy, but in case you can get something out of them for your own sake in life. May your road's bumps be manageable with God's grace.

MS Word's Thesaurus Is Too Flexible.

2009-05-01T22:35:00.007-04:00

Seriously, you know it's bad when you can't find a good synonym so you give the thing a word and wind up entertaining yourself seeing how off-track you can get from your original meaning. Here's tonight's example. It's not the best, but I find it amusing to see that I accidentally almost came full-circle with this one:

weather

erode

wear away

wear out

exhaust

drain

sap

liquid

fluid

solution

explanation

details

information

in turn

one by one

alone

unaided

independently

in competition

in contention

arguing

in conflict

fighting

war

combat

contest

race

event

affair

issue

problem

crisis

disaster

blow

gust

squall

storm

Note: I've stumbled upon a better chain, which I'll post once it reaches an end. Technically, this one could have gone on, but I got tired of navigating the different storms to find a way on. I've since looked at it and found that "gust" gives you a couple of options....

Why do I want to be a ROM hacker?

2009-04-30T20:51:00.006-04:00

So I can do stuff like this! Can you believe these are the fruits of somebody's hackwork on Super Mario World?

And to think that I can hardly edit levels, let alone make all sorts of custom sprites and programming modifications! Why? Because the "community" is a DISorganization that cannot tell me what I actually need to know! Alas, it frustrates me to no end. I suppose they say much of the hobby is self-taught because it HAS to be for any newcomers to learn anything. *Sigh* My hope lives on, though. I've got too many great ideas to waste by giving up. And this guy is one of the biggest pros I've ever seen, so it would be foolhardy to become discouraged by comparison. If every artist did that, we'd only have a handful of paintings, music, etc. in the world because few would make use of whatever talent they had.

I have a feeling that's a lesson I'm going to be hit with again and again throughout life.

If I Made a Rubik's Cube ...

2009-04-11T14:15:00.008-04:00

I've had a share of what I consider to be great product ideas, but this one almost leaves me shaking my own head. I half think this is brilliant and half think it's psychotic, so I'm curious to know what others' opinions on this are -- especially if you're a big Rubik's Cube nut. So here we go.

I don't have any first-hand experience but I imagine that as those Cubes get bigger and bigger they just pack on more layers of the same puzzle. Granted, this makes things more challenging, but I'm looking at a different approach. Rather than solving some 30x30x30 monstrosity, I want to make a toy that both challenges one's knowledge of what has to be done as well as their ability to look ahead and formulate a procedure ahead of time.

This Cube would be computerized, with colored lights instead of stickers, so it could jumble the whole thing up automatically and determine the number of moves required to solve it. This number would be set as a limit, and it would keep track of the turns made, counting down until the allotted number was reached. If you didn't solve it at that point, game over!

Here's the best part: the name, which I initially came up with as a joke and which gave root to the whole idea in the first place. I'd call it the "Rubikon Cube" -- once you've started turning it, there's no turning back!

I don't know about you, but I'm glad I won't be getting one of those in my basket this year. Happy Easter!

New DS Zelda ...

2009-03-26T16:12:00.012-04:00

... with a steam locomotive?!? How industrial must Hyrule become? And can Link have to do absolutely everything on his own, like back in the pre-Navi days, please? And if Zelda is in this one, how does Ganondorf come into play? Is this a brand-new story, or did the water level drop since Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass? Does Link start out running a train-powered postal service? Is that what's with the one shot with Zelda in the teaser? Did the old postman bite the dust after his accident in Twilight Princess? Perhaps this is in between Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, and tells the story of how the world became a cartoon? Would that explain the big statue Link seems to be controlling in the teaser, which reminds me of those from Twilight Princess that you could move with the Dominion Rod? Does this finally link up Wind Waker with its predecessors by ending in a massive flood because Link melts the polar ice caps with all the carbons his cannon-sporting choo-choo produces? Did nobody ever tell him there's a reason the hero wears green? Oh boy, can we have a political satire of a Zelda game?? At the rate things are moving, the next generation of Zelda titles will have no swords, will they? Or will Nintendo pull the Final Fantasy stunt and throw anachronistic restraints to the wind? When will Link get a Buster Sword, huh?? He's got Power Bracelets, he could wield it, right? Won't Ganondorf eventually forget the Triforce of Power, then, and settle for H-bombs? And when things get that high-tech, will Link's sword be able to shoot beams again, for crying out loud?!? Will it have some built-in laser device? For that matter, at the stage of technology things are currently at, why hasn't Link bought a weed-wacker so he doesn't have to slice grass by hand? Aren't spherical bombs with rope wicks getting a little old-fashioned? How long will it be before magic doesn't exist any more, as there's been less and less of it in the past few games? Golly, is all this modernization the reason the difficulty level has dropped so low?? Does Link have his degrees to operate these things? Oh, but Hyrule doesn't have an education system, does it? That'll be next, right? And has any monarchy in history ever lasted this long? When's the revolution, man? How is the line of princesses continuing when there hasn't been a king since A Link to the Past and Minish Cap, and history tells of no queen whatsoever? Can I take a look at the genealogy of the Hylian royal family, please? Or would it just say, "Zelda, Zelda, Zelda, Zelda, Zelda, Zelda...."? Has this all been fake, and the princess is in another castle? When will the Triforce of Courage be renamed "the Triforce of Blind, Emotionless Adventure"? Does Link really have courage, or is he a retarded instruction-follower? Is that why a side character has to tell him everything nowadays? And why is anyone still trying to connect these games in a timeline? Isn't it obvious now that the goddesses are creating the world over and over again, inducing small differences and bringing about variations of the same events in a quest to get their story just right? Isn't there a Hylian legend that says, "The goddesses saw that what they had made was cool but not good enough, so they said 'Be interesting and multiply ... You shall have dominion over whatever monsters you can overpower ... We shall watch and most likely forsake you, going off to build a new existence when you get boring.'"? When will Nintendo turn the series over to me so I can do things right?

Falcon Punch: Kirby Remix!

2009-03-23T21:36:00.003-04:00

During an period of brain-flushing the buried panic of school and the exhaustion of researching aluminum, I came across the following video.

Somebody sure put their time and editing skills to good use. This is meaningless, yet it had me laughing so hard!

Voice-acting, my foot.

2009-03-16T23:11:00.009-04:00

See, this is what happens when you give a character gibberish voice-acting that's any more sophisticated than in Star Fox.

Random Update Time!

2009-03-01T19:39:00.018-05:00

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Absolutely spectacular.

I just went out driving in our subdivision with my dad, and MAN is our car's gas pedal better than my instructor's car's!

I am still annoyed with the ROM hacking so-called "community" because they only explain pieces of things.

I found this translation hack of Zelda II. Oh, the nostalgia, trying to decipher the Latin with the aid of memories of the original English.

The Powder Game has added a second player ability.

It is the fourth anniversary of my diagnosis with diabetes.

Calvin Cupcake!

2009-02-26T15:56:00.008-05:00

As per our family tradition, on "Fat Tuesday" we made and decorated cupcakes. It has always been a good time for family as well as a fun, tasty activity sporting everyone's artistic talents. The creativity seems to escalate, and this year I brought it to a new level of delicate precision.I'm glad we had enough yellow gel! I had to use a toothpick more than once to draw it into the frizzy style Calvin wears because it would spread out gradually. The head, eyes, and mouth are chocolate frosting carefully laid with toothpicks, the eyes swirled into the vanilla background. The tongue and nose are sprinkles. It took some time, but I think I nailed it pretty well (although there's some chocolate sticking up from the border on the bottom-right -- I seriously don't remember that problem outside of the picture. Maybe my dad took it at an angle just different enough from the perspective at which I worked....).

Driving Vs. Calvin and Hobbes

2009-02-24T19:43:00.009-05:00

With the exception of crashing (for I have not crashed), the fast pace and amount of things to pay attention to when driving seem to me much like the mayhem our favorite little genius goes through on his engineless vehicles, both loved and hated.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2009-02-14T18:59:00.003-05:00

New Powder Game Material

2009-02-08T21:52:00.004-05:00

A quick check on the "powder game" reveals the addition of "acid" as of the end of January. Another of the more mobile substances, acid is what it should be: a corrosive that eats through just about everything. It differs from virus in that it doesn't spread cancerously, doesn't phase material identities, and gradually gets used up in the process. It doesn't even trigger explosions, which could be pretty handy (although I feel like researching acids and their effects on explosives in real life...).

"Advent: One-Winged Angel" Lyrics

2009-02-06T22:38:00.007-05:00

I finally stumbled upon the lyrics, in Latin and with English translation, to Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children's remix of "One-Winged Angel." So if you're a nerd (like me) who noticed the lyrics sound different but never tracked them down to find out if they're new or just sound new because they're in Japanese (again, like me) ... here you go. Right here in the Final Fantasy Wiki. (Sounds a bit silly to not have looked someplace like this a long time ago.)

By the way, if you happen to find out why there is an "official translation" separate from a "literal translation," let me know.

And while you're there, look up "Sephiroth" and check out the "naming" section. Sephiroth (and his various boss forms) has an interesting share of biblical derivations.

Driver's Ed is Psychologically Unhealthy

2009-02-03T19:36:00.004-05:00

I'm finally taking a driving course, but so far there have been more horror stories than educational material. I know things really have to be pounded through the skulls of most careless teens, but I'm coming to class to learn how to drive. I've got the proper mindset and logical thinking pattern, so I want to get straight to the instruction part. The teacher, a former fireman, has already given us a number of life-saving tips for various scenarios, many of which aren't taught in the books; he really cares about his students and has repeatedly mentioned that other schools don't really make sure you learn anything. But the advice given thus far has been through recountings of the accidents he dealt with in his previous career. The gruesome consequences of mistakes on the road, the sad reality of everyday crime, etc. It's not like I'm hypersensitive, but I care, and I really don't think it's good for the other facets of my life. I haven't been scared, but sleep comes with difficulty. My schoolwork has repeatedly escaped my concentration. And I've just not felt particularly happy most of the time. Call me a sissy if you want, but I'm more mature than the average teen, and such an overall interference is not how I want to prepare for getting my licence.

OverClocked Remixes

2009-01-25T20:27:00.004-05:00

Here I am, sitting at the computer, trying to write a lab report that's due for chemistry class on Tuesday, watching my blood sugar go back up to the high numbers that make it hard to concentrate on anything, lamenting being sick for the past two-thirds of the week, and praying that the stoichiometry stuff I still need to do will be quick and easy since I have driving class for over four hours tomorrow. It's one of those weekends that would be making me panic if it all weren't so dreary and depressing.

To provide a muffler for the noises and distractions all around me, I am listening to a bunch of fan-made remixes of video game music. And when I say "remix" I'm not talking about just rock'n'roll, techno type stuff. I'm referring to amazing arrangements of one or many VG tunes using a variety of instruments and covering a multitude of styles. Piano, trumpets, strings, some spunky stuff... Adventure, peace, fun, sadness... All made by people who do it because they can. The site (and community) that hosts them is OCRemix.org and they are called OC Remixes (big surprise). Many are synthesized; after all, how many people have a real orchestra at their command? The big deal is the quality, so unless you live by yourself and have a very good microphone, you might as well synthesize your piano pieces as well. That way all you require is the good equipment; no need to worry about keeping your breath out of the recording or anything.

So anyway, on top of everything else, I'm again experiencing the desire to make some of my own. Actually, those that I mentioned four posts ago are some. The problem is, I've needed a good program or mixer to produce them. Well, my dad found a certain Magix Music Studio at Half-Price Books for about $25, less than half of the retail $80. It looks like it could do what I need it to, but it doesn't run smoothly on our computers. Wanting to get a laptop anyway, I figured maybe the way to go would be to get a Macbook and run Windows XP on it. Time to get a job, right? But whenever that looked like a good idea, I had too much else I wanted to do.

On the other hand, since I'm making so little progress as a ROM hacker (that SMW site tells hackers all there is to know about SMW, not how to be a SMW hacker), I'm revisiting the possibility. The sooner I start, the sooner I can work my way towards something. I've realized that, while I spend so much time on various interests, there is often a lack of actual productivity in them. The way I see it, if I want to really get into these things, I need to do it with determination, with a passion. As long as I'm only exploring in such areas, I should make sure something else gets some real attention and effort.

By the way, for a good taste of the variety OCRemix has to offer, try searching for "Predetermination," "The Place We Knew," "Flight of Destiny," "Timeless," "Odyssey Beyond the Falls," "Jamming Loneliness," "Darkworld Jazz," and "A Day in the Life of a Gambler." .....Just to name a few ; ) --though if you're into rock/metal stuff, just click on anything and sooner or later you'll find what you want.

SMW Hacking

2009-01-21T12:53:00.008-05:00

I've had plenty of time on the computer lately, so how come I haven't been blogging more? Because I found a website dedicated to Super Mario World ROM hacking. And it's a Mario World unto itself.

One problem with wanting to be a ROMhacker has been the lack of organized information. Having no computer programming experience to begin with, the wealth of terms and workings involved are not so much overwhelming as inadequately explained. Tutorials never seem to say enough; they often assume you already know all about something they refer to, or are inapplicable to half of the existing tools for the area.

I have hope with this place because it hosts as much as is currently known on a single game. There are tools for graphics editing, changing game mechanics, and even inserting music via a text file. They have a ~41% (and counting) complete list of all the ROM addresses, with their byte sizes and game effects. And it's a place to share creations, ideas, findings, and questions.

Or so you'd think. The forums give me the impression that they absolutely hate questions from bewildered "noobs" with the "inability to read a readme." Fine, you bunch of stuck-ups. I'm rather averse to message boards anyway. They demand too much time to partake in, and outsiders will have a hard time finding what they need. That's why, when I require an explanation, I use Google[TM-thing!] and search for specific keywords in a single website; this can usually locate a particular post relevant to my problem.

Anyway, I figured if I really want to learn this stuff, I should start where there is plenty to learn. There will be many differences in hacking other games, but this way I'll gain the background knowledge necessary to see where I'm going. It's like feeling your way through a dark, familiar room as opposed to a dark, unfamiliar room.

All I need is the time-and-determination side of nerdage, which I know won't come for me automatically.

New Chemistry Class

2009-01-14T15:45:00.004-05:00

(Hey, a life-relevant post!)

Yesterday I joined a different chemistry class, which meets every Tuesday. I like the teacher, Dr. C, whom one of my brothers learned from back in highschool as well. Due to differences in the textbooks' depths, this class is farther into the subject, but hasn't been covering some parts in quite as much detail. I'm currently a bit rusty in areas that I had down cold in physical science last year, though that should change without a problem.

The main factor in switching classes was our schedule. My brother started going to a community college, and that conflicted with the Wednesday chemistry course. My mom and I actually had to choose between the two classes at the start of the school year, and while I didn't want to miss out on the one my brother so loved, Dr. F (who is a neat teacher, don't get me wrong) provided a more convenient program at the time.

I guess this way I'll have gotten a bit of each!

"Castlevania" music like you've never heard before

2009-01-10T21:58:00.007-05:00

I could write a very long analysis of the parameters of video game music, but I'll save that for another time. Right now I'd like to share something truly awesome to hear: a beautiful piano rendition of the outdoor theme from Castlevania II. Never take a melody only one way you hear it. A great thing about music is its versatility, the ranges and styles that can be achieved with a single tune.

I like to work on video game piano arrangements myself. I've currently turned out a short elaboration of the title screen of Shadowgate; a rather moving piece from Solar Jetman accented with another bit from Shadowgate; and a remix that takes from Super Mario Bros., Chrono Trigger, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which will probably become more than piano once I can properly synthesize anything.

Science, Philosophy, and Common Knowledge

2009-01-09T21:44:00.005-05:00

Philosophy classes resumed this morning, and we started in on the appetites. The Christmas break reading on the subject got the addition of a newspaper article about a week ago, which discussed shopping and what goes on psychologically throughout. Neuroscientists used MRI scans and found a "war in the brain" between the pleasure over a desired item and the pain of spending money for it.

Through my philosophic eyes: "Yes, that makes perfect sense. The concupiscible appetite's attractions and aversions are blah blah blah...."

Through my everyday eyes: "They needed MRIs to show that? Give me a break."

"Climate change" on the radio this morning ...

2009-01-07T13:26:00.007-05:00

As near as I can remember:

"What we're dealing with is climate change..."
"Change?"
"That's right."
"So as soon as it stopped warming, it became 'change'?"
"Look, what I'm trying to say is the climate's changing..."
"Of course it is."
"The temperature is..."
"If the climate never changed, it wouldn't be climate."
"When..."
"If the temperature was always the same, we'd have no concept of temperature!"
"Okay, but when the planet's conditions are altered..."
"Uh-huh..."
"...and the temperature is gradually rising over..."
"It's cold out."
"Mike..."
"More people die from the cold than from the heat!"
"And even more die from tsunamis."
"Tsunamis have nothing to do with this!"
"Listen..."
"Tsunamis are caused by a shift in the Earth's crust..."
"...the plates change, exactly..."
"They don't change because of the temperature..."
"Right, it's because of earthquakes."
"Yeah."
"What I'm getting at is..."
"Earthquakes don't happen because the earth heats up!"
"No, I'm just saying that the world changes..."
"Yeah, but..."
"...and we..."
"Listen, Nick... It's getting colder! So shut up!"

A "3-D CD"

2009-01-06T19:37:00.005-05:00

ZMaro, SCobbler, and I were chatting about video games at my late birthday party yesterday, and at some point ZM mentioned that the Playstation was supposed to be a "3-D system," yet there seemed to be as many 2-D games on it as there were 3-D games. "Well, those disks are pretty flat," I joked. "A true 3-D system would have some triangular prism that floats in mid-air and is read by lasers from multiple directions."

As many of our conversations go, this simple, witty comment shot us off on a whole different tangent as we began discussing how a three-dimensional "CD" would function.

SC, being a bit over-practical for the amount of sugar we were running off, pointed out that a pyramid would be almost impossible to spin like a CD and be read; a sphere would work much better. Before I could say more than "A sphere is dull," he added that a cone would be best, because you wouldn't have to deal with the inconsistent proximity of the sphere's surface to the reading laser. I wasn't sure what he was talking about at the time, although now I think he might have been referring to a single laser moving in a perpendicular direction to the sphere's spinning, like a CD player's laser moving from the inside to the outside. If this is the case, a cone would help, as the angle would never change. However, a cone would truly remedy the problem if it was spun on a tilted axis such that the side facing the laser was vertically straight, but if you went in that direction you might as well settle on a cylinder.

I, on the other hand, wasn't thinking of having the object spin whilst the laser(s) moved. I was picturing an object held in the center of a zero-G container rotating (though not necessarily spinning quickly) in any direction so that fixed lasers could read every area. However, I still didn't manage to communicate this because ZMaro took us completely off-guard by saying that the lasers would spin around the sphere. My dad kind of stabbed the idea and left it for dead by exposing the inefficiency of doing that. Then SCobbler practically discarded the whole anti-gravity part by suggesting "rollers" that would turn the sphere (of course, I suppose using a cone might negate the antigrav as well).

I eventually just verbalized the fact that a pyramid would be the coolest, but SC wouldn't go down without a fight. Thanks to him we began rationalizing the dilemma of where information is located. He said that a sphere or pyramid would cause issues with where to start reading and it would be impractical to have "directions" all over the thing to point to what to read next. "Hey," I said, "by the time this is done in the first place, data storage will be so advanced that it shouldn't pose a problem." I think we ended on that note, but it may only have been because ZM had to leave.

So we went from yakking about games to theorizing 3-D optical storage, and all the while our parents stood by watching and waiting for us to finish. As ZM said last night, "Sometimes I forget just how nerdy we sound."

Returning pics lost (from blog transfer?)

2009-01-04T21:34:00.004-05:00

I just spent the last hour and a half digging through my files for all of the pictures that go in my posts from September 2008, then placing them in the posts all over again. When I transferred my blog, everything was fine -- until I removed the other user, I guess. I looked at the posts to make sure their pictures were still in place, and they were. As a matter of fact, I think they were there after I deleted my other account. So, what happened? I just found that all of my previous posts had pics that wouldn't display, so now I have to go reinsert them. September took long enough; I don't feel like doing any more tonight (of course, after September and October, I had a considerable slump in posting frequency).

I have a question: do pictures get lost like this at the turn of the year? They really shouldn't, but I suppose that's a possibility. If that's the case, well... I don't know, that's just dumb. It would surprise me if they don't tick off a whole lot of users every time.

The Powder Game

2009-01-04T20:05:00.005-05:00

My younger brother's friend showed him this awesome web game just last month. Called the "powder" or "dust" game, it is a simple Java thing with infinite fun and creative possibilities.

The main function consists of playing around with many "powdery" pixels of diverse natures, each having different simulated physical and chemical properties. Some fall faster than others, a few are "solid" and hang in mid-air, etc. A good number of them are flammable, so all you high-school chemistry students who just want to see things blow up should get hooked on this game pretty easily. = ) Almost every substance has a special quality when thrown together with another: for example, water solidifies magma; thunder electrifies metal; torch burns what hits it but is dissolved by water; and the infamous virus eats through and overruns all others, eventually turning back into the first material it came in contact with. Searching for all the unique reactions is part of the entertainment.

In addition to the dusts, you can conjure up boxes, spinning wheels, and edit the indestructible terrain, including the border. The sides of the screen can be set to loop, so that whatever goes off one side comes in on the other. Various visual effects can be selected, such as leaving blurs or showing the direction and pressure of the air. Ah, the air. You can blow stuff around and set up "fans" wherever you want. Combustion can really blast things around, as well.

With all of these features to toy with, you can go anywhere from blowing things up to making interactive works of art (like this soda machine). If that's not enough, there's also a little controllable stick-man who can walk, jump, and acquire abilities from the various dusts (okay, so the laser doesn't behave like a dust), so playable challenges become an option. Pit your friends against a puzzle, or against any number of crazy, kicking, not-too-bright enemy stick-men.

Only registered members can upload their work, but it's possible to save your levels offline. There is a text window above the main game screen that says "Save game" and has two buttons to the right. Click "Get" to have the window display the code for the game's current situation. Copy this and you can stick it back in and click "Set" to get that arrangement whenever you want.

The website itself seems to be a Japanese Java game site that has been mostly translated into English (I find it amusing that the sign-up terms and agreements are still in Japanese characters). The only other games I've tried are "Stick Ranger," a work-in-progress stick-figure RPG, and an orbital gravity simulator, which brings back memories of something we had on our old Mac 2CX (I remember throwing the moon off on a bad trajectory and watching it crash into Earth with a shattering noise...). It looks like everything, including the Powder Game, is always being improved, so I'm going to keep my eye on the place.

SMB2 Hack: Mario's Gaming Dream

2009-01-03T13:23:00.023-05:00

Our internet protection service wasn't working yesterday, so I couldn't access the internet to blog. Instead, I returned to my ROM hacking and dusted off the resulting project of my first venture in the hobby:

I wrote this plot (pretty much an excuse to change whatever I want) shortly after learning to text hack, but the work began over a year ago when I first laid a finger on ROM hacking tools. I had read a tutorial on NES graphics hacking that demonstrated the program with Final Fantasy's characters, then tried it myself. Grabbing the knight's various frames straight out of Final Fantasy, I stuck them where Mario's sprites went in Super Mario Bros. 2. The result excited me so much I decided to draw my own sprites for climbing ladders, ducking, and throwing, the only moves that ripped FF sprites didn't cover. I must have played that ROM for an hour, I was having so much fun.
Then the fighter (who grows up to be the knight) took small Mario's place, making things even more complete. Except for one problem: the knight and the fighter both take up the same amount of space in FF, so they didn't work for being big and small in SMB2. In fact, the knight was half a tile short to take big Mario's place, which was really bad for where the top of the character belonged.

Though it took a lot of work, I found the solution. I noticed how the small characters' heads are oversized for the rest of them in SMB2, so I took the head of the fighter and gave it a homemade, tiny body. I was amazed at my own work; I never expected I could do it so well, being such a lousy artist (I still don't think the knight's climbing sprite looks right...). The time I put into it certainly paid off. As for the knight, I just made his legs longer. = )

The verdict at that junction was to overhaul everything and make an SMB2-style Final Fantasy game, but that never saw the light of day because the other FF characters have too many colors. They get away with having one more color than can fit in SMB2 because the battle background in FF is black, allowing transparency to be used for what has to be black in SMB2. That said, the hack "collected dust" while an alternative goal was sought.

I hit upon the idea to use anything that would work some time ago, and later hacked the storyline to be something like what is shown above. Finally, the idea hit me yesterday to use Simon Belmont, from the Castlevania series, in place of Luigi. I'm nowhere near done with this change (he still has Luigi's colors...), but its completion will be a great feat, as Simon is rather sophisticated for an 8-bit figure. Hopefully people won't find it too weird how Simon flutters his legs in mid-air. Luigi did that, so what can I do? Changing such qualities falls under ASM (assembly) hacking, which is a rather advanced branch of the science (hobby? art? science?). Well, I'm using Simon's sprites (with some refinement) from Castlevania II, in which he actually fell rather slowly, so it works out in my opinion.

Unintended Birthday Gift

2009-01-01T17:44:00.005-05:00

My birthday was two days ago, and it wasn't a big event. I turned old enough to do nonexistent magic outside of the nonexistent wizarding school, and I got an electric razor. Not much to write about. But then there was something that just happened to arrive that day, making it a sort of birthday treat: the continuous blood glucose monitoring system that we've been trying to get for such a long time!

It occurs to me now that I've never brought up my diabetic condition before. So, to provide the necessary information: I was diagnosed with "type 1" diabetes (otherwise known as "juvenile" diabetes, although adults can develop it as well) in 2005, and have since been checking my blood's sugar levels by stabbing my fingers at least six times a day.

The continuous monitor, the Navigator, has a sensor that remains in my flesh and constantly keeps track of my sugar levels, forming line graphs, showing change rates, and alarming when there's too much or too little sugar. This will be great for analyzing trends and making insulin ratio adjustments, as it fills in all of the gaps left when just testing as the need arises. For now, though, I'm happy to be free of so many finger sticks, especially at night when my parents check on me.

Being such new technology, getting insurance to approve of it took a long time, and we lucked out that they consented before the new year. It also seems like a special blessing that this device came on my birthday, and I'm very grateful for it.

A new year's notice--

2009-01-01T01:06:00.004-05:00

Well, now that I'm finally back on my blog, I have a lot to say, most of which I've forgotten, unfortunately. But I do have some good and important news: I finally managed to transfer this blog to the e-mail address I desire. It was a very weird process; nothing happened the way it should have. Since the author invitation approach didn't work, I exported the blog and imported it on my other account, and found that both accounts were listed as authors, despite the fact that it was registered as a different blog. In fact, the account I'd been using suddenly was the author of two blogs. Anyway, despite all of the anxiety and precautions throughout the ordeal, it proved to be a simple and harmless task to delete the first account and blog entirely, leaving these in their places. No posts were lost in the process, and all of the settings were carried over. The only items that had to be reconstructed were the Tome of Randomness, the poll, and the pictures, which I hopefully restored to their original states (except for the poll, which I threw out since it had no voting history). Oh, and my profile has only 8 views...

Now, the greatest importance of this:

This blog's address is now ahspensieve.blogspot.com -- The old address could not be reused.

So, Happy New Year, and I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate). I'm off to bed.

Stick-Figure Anime

2008-12-19T22:14:00.001-05:00

I was hanging out with ZMaro today, talking about random stuff, when the topic of anime emerged. I've never cared for anime-style cartoons or video game cutscenes, because they're so.......weird. The way characters don't move their mouths in accordance with their speech, the manner in which they move their bodies, the corny "camera" attention and facial expressions -- ugh. And when they are fighting and zoom at each other, yelling like drunk teenagers as the world streams by in multi-colored lines, the sweat drips down their faces, and there's a close-up of a guy whose eyes are growing bigger and bigger as his mouth twitches in the same spot for five secondsandthenBAAMMMM!!! the guy flies 40 feet backward and slams into a wall so hard the bricks shatter and he's stuck there; that is, only until he's through acting totally unrealistic for a short piece of dialogue, at which point he flies off the wall and does the same to his opponent. Who would watch such stuff??

ZMaro said he finds anime hilarious because it's so dumb. It's only good purpose is being an object to make fun of. I jokingly pointed out that it also serves as proof that we who can only draw stick-figures are better artists than many Japanese people. "Anime? Blech. I can draw STICK-FIGURES!"

When we began making silly doodles as a result of that conversation and ZMaro drew a stick man planting a gargantuan fist into another stick man, I suddenly had a brilliant idea: stick-figure anime! If we ever become good enough artists to make good animations, we'll create a series with characters doing all those stupid anime moves and pulling those corny expressions in what is supposed to be some great, dramatic moment -- in STICK-FIGURE STYLE!!

A brief mention of religion and science ...

2008-12-15T16:45:00.002-05:00

"... the elements will be dissolved by fire ..."

These words were heard in the second reading on the second Sunday of Advent (and are, regrettably, the only subject for blogging that I can remember now that I can actually blog again...). When I heard them, I couldn't help but laugh inwardly at what I began thinking: what would the ancient Greeks have thought of this? They believed fire was one of the elements! "Let me get this straight: fire will destroy earth, water, and air, and then it will burn itself out? That's a rather meloncholy way to end the world."

With today's science, on the other hand, this passage kind of makes sense. Fire is a combustion reaction in which molecular (and sometimes atomic) structures are broken down and re-arranged. So when the day of the Lord comes and Heaven and Earth pass away... Um, how will fire destroy Heaven? I guess I'll leave this up to St. John.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make here is that religion and science are not enemies. This is very limited example, to be sure, and perhaps St. Peter was being metaphorical, but take it for what it's worth.

Spiff Hack Update

2008-11-14T19:13:00.003-05:00

Being the end of the week, I've had time to continue (resume?) working on my hack of Solar Jetman. I figured I'd announce where I am and where I'm going at this point.

Changing the graphics of the pod is proving to be a slow and difficult process. The pod turns 360 degrees while corkscrewing so that you see the top when it faces up and you see the bottom when it faces down. This makes everything in between hard to draw and smoothly connect, especially since Spiff's ship is a saucer and I have to work with a solid red unless I decide to take extra liberties.

Since graphics work was tiring, I decided to look for a utility for overall level editing; I found none. In order to change the level layouts, types and positions of enemies and items, what makes you go where, and so forth, I need an editor. These kinds of things are rocket science to change via raw coding, and if one knows enough to do so, they might as well create a utility to make it easier. Rather than devote my entire computer life to such a thing, I'm going to wait, and possibly ask, for such a program to be made by a ROM hacking veteran. Unfortunately, this could place restraints on what I do until such ability comes into my hands, as I won't be able to fit planet names with planet environments and such all at once. In fact, if I finish this hack in every other way, it may remain a visual hack only, depending on my interest to come back and rework the level designs once I possess the requirements to do so.

So what can I change right now besides graphics? Text. Text hacking is a category unto itself due to how it is stored in a ROM. There are graphical tiles for each letter and number, and the game uses strings of hex numbers in which one number translates to one tile. This makes the hacking a matter of locating the hex strings that represent text. But how is this done, and how do you know what number corresponds to which letter? I viewed this as a complicated problem in the past; in fact, this is the first time I've done it. I once again (I had tried once before) read a tutorial on the procedure, and since I could not get the recommended DOS hex editor (Hexposure) to work properly on the computer, attempted it with the editor I have, differently though it works.

A table file, containing the key for hex and text, is needed to locate and change the right data. Since none existed for Solar Jetman, I had to make my own (I believe this is where I said "forget it" in the past, since Hexposure wasn't cooperating and I didn't know how to use the Zelda table I found with my favored editor). Opening the ROM in a debug emulator, I called up the tile viewer, found the text tiles, and wrote down their hex values in Notepad. After saving the key as a ".tbl" file, I opened it in my hex editor along with the ROM. All the hex numbers in the ROM were displayed on one side and, thanks to the table, the corresponding numbers and letters (where applicable) on the other.

A given hex number may appear several times in the data, and an editor will show it as a text graphic wherever it crops up, regardless of whether it is text or not. Finding the actual text was the easy part, though. I just had to scroll through the data until I found actual words from the game. Then all that had to be done was change the hex numbers so they made the text I wanted.

However, Solar Jetman had a catch. Each planet's name was missing the last letter in the editor, with one untranslated hex number in its place before the text for the next planet. I had to tinker with this on my own in order to figure out how to deal with it. Experimenting with planet 2, I first tried replacing the untranslated number with the hex for "D;" but when I opened the game I found that "2 MEXOMORF" (the F was missing in the editor) had become "2 MEXOMORD3 OMEBRU." The text had been squished together with planet 3's. I could draw two conclusions from this: the unrecognized hex contained the missing letter, and it also served as a sort of break or finisher, ending the line of text. I made certain of this by replacing the number in between planets 1 and 2 with the one in between planets 2 and 3. Sure enough, this made "1 PRELUDON" say "1 PRELUDOF." At this point I began to jot down the values for these "letters and breaks" in my table file, and suddenly noticed that if I filled in the rest of the letters of the alphabet that the game's planets didn't use, I would have sequential hex for every letter followed by one of those breaks. The last question, then, was whether or not I could use the resulting table to end a planet's name with a letter that the game never did. I tried it, and it worked!

I am very pleased with this accomplishment; maybe I'll be a great ROM hacker yet.

My brother: historical encyclopedia and practical joker.

2008-11-12T19:40:00.000-05:00

My younger brother sure pulled a fast one on me today. I was in the basement playing Solar Jetman when he walked into the room with an expressionless face and a sullen tone, informing me that it's become awfully easy to assassinate people. I thought he was bringing grave, political news that I had failed to hear because I was downstairs playing video games; immediately pausing the game, I turned to face him and demanded to know what had happened. "BANG!" he yelled, pointing his finger at me.

I've been avoiding direct politics within T.H.I.N.G., but that doesn't mean I haven't been following the issues. With all that's been going on lately, I was somewhere between worried and exasperated at the thought of an assassination. Man! I don't think my brother had any idea what was shooting through my mind as he did that. Well, I'm grateful that it was a false alarm.

Hey, Obama's Tux Cat's are still all I've truly mentioned here about the election. Hooray for me!

We only have fractions of the Hylian legend ...

2008-10-30T20:34:00.001-04:00

Wow. Ever since I saw a blurb on a Zelda fan site about the "Ocarina of Time Beta Project," I've been trying to find out more about it. At first I thought it was just some attempt to make a debug ROM playable or something, but when I read the blurb and saw that it was about the discovery of the graphic for a sword-beam (a classic ability never used in a 3D Zelda except for the Fierce Deity's Mask in Majora's Mask), I realized that there were some big possibilities hidden in the game's data. "But what exactly are these people chasing after?" I thought.

I can't be entirely sure, but I believe that this is the answer. The N64DD (see my previous post) would have been able to do some pretty unthinkable things had it not been a failure. A lot of the N64 games out there were initially being developed for it but were later moved to regular cartridge releases, including Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. In fact, the two Zelda titles were originally going to be a single one; and if you gathered all the stuff that got thrown out, you'd probably have a third game! I haven't been able to find much direct info on the "Beta Project," but it's probably an attempt to unearth everything buried in the ROM and eventually piece together the original Zelda game in its full awesomeness.

A couple of quick notes about the page I've linked to:

The writing is pretty bad as far as grammar goes. It's followable, but it looks like the person who wrote it was either tired or slightly drunk.
At the end there are some tidbits about Master Quest, under the heading "Zelda: Master Quest on the GameCube." These are about Master Quest, NOT Ura Zelda (the original project), even though the writer says a couple of things like "I’m probably about 50% to 60% of the way through Ura Zelda, and to this point, the -only- changes are inside the dungeons. The overworld stuff is all exactly the same as in Ocarina of Time." Let's face it: he couldn't write well to begin with, so he could have gotten mixed-up pretty easily. With that in mind, there may be other areas where he got the two confused, but none jump out at me (perhaps the bit about Miyamoto commenting, in 2000, that "Ura Zelda has been completed for some time now," but that may very well be accurate).

N64 Add-on -- Changed plans

2008-10-30T18:55:00.000-04:00

This sure explains things. Ever wonder why Ocarina of Time: Master Quest was made in the first place? Why the later Final Fantasy games went solely to the PlayStation? Why Metroid was never seen until the GameCube? Why Nintendo never pulled through with so many projects, now the objects of internet rumors or attempted fan recoveries? Take a peek at the list of intended games after reading the article.

By the way, I've made a small update to my arwing cameo post.

Update: I'm here, just pretty busy ...

2008-10-25T20:21:00.001-04:00

It's been a while since I last posted, but I'm not just sitting around doing nothing. I finally got an opportunity to beat Megaman 9, and I have a long post on it waiting to happen, but I haven't had the time. The other day my dad asked me when I'd blog about something besides video games. I actually found non-game material that day and wanted to post on it, but I couldn't get on the computer, and I'm too preoccupied to do it now. I've had many ideas swirling through my head lately, between philosophy class, game ideas, an idea for another blog, and a piano piece I'm writing from an NES game called Shadowgate. I've felt that if I managed to snag enough time to post on even one of these things, it would sort of do an injustice to the others that I'd have to confine to my thoughts for longer; hence this general post.

Bad Megaman Art

2008-10-19T15:34:00.000-04:00

Looks like the box art for the first Megaman game has finally met its match.

Why can't they draw Megaman as a robot? And Dr. Wily is not Dr. Weil (from the Megaman Zero series), but this will make fans go all over that idea again.

Ocarina of Time Cameo: Arwing

2008-10-19T10:56:00.000-04:00

There are a good number of beta objects in a variety of games, and any video game fan should already know of the great abundance of cameos -- that is, appearances in a game of something, such as a character, from a different game. By far, though, this is the most intricate one I've ever seen. With a gameshark code (81242E66 000981242EF4 013B81242F02 0000) you can unveil the presence of a fully functional arwing that flies around and shoots at you. This may be a cameo that was never made use of in the final production (a beta object), but the thing that really raises questions is the fact that it's so complete. The level of interaction, the sound effects used nowhere else, and the special camera attention given when you enter the forest make this a cameo you'd never expect to see. (As a side note, what the code does is replace an existing object with the values for the arwing, which probably include the "instructions" for the camera coverage. The proof of this is a bush that you cannot cut, lift, or do anything to -- namely, the bush that a Kokiri child is trying to pick up. The kid is gone; guess where he went!)

While I'm talking about Ocarina of Time, I'll mention something else: Ocarina of Time: Master Quest, the more difficult and puzzling version released on the GameCube is still an N64 game. The Master Quest, as well as the GameCube ports of OoT and Majora's Mask, are technically emulated on the GameCube. As a result, Master Quest has been successfully dumped as an N64 ROM and is fully playable on an N64 emulator.

Ike's Suicidal Final Smash

2008-10-17T21:33:00.000-04:00

It's a pity I can't post a pic or, better yet, the video I took of this on Super Smash Bros. Brawl (well, I could, but it wouldn't be worth the effort). I was wondering what would happen if you designed a stage with a wide enough gap in the middle that Ike has nothing to land on when he executes his final smash. So I built just that. I recorded a 1-stock battle of myself, as Ike, fighting a CPU Marth. I got the smash ball and hit Marth with the Great Aether; they soared up to the top of the center of the stage, Ike clobbered Marth, and then down they shot, straight to their deaths, at exactly the same time! This is one of the very few occasions (and definitely the easiest) in which you will ever get sudden death on stock mode.

Solar Jetman hack: Spaceman Spiff

2008-10-12T13:13:00.003-04:00

This is a hack I am working on, as of a few days ago. I got the idea some time before, but never sat down to experiment with it. Now I have Spiff's graphics completed, including palette changes, and am working on his ship. It's very time-taking to redraw every frame of the ship turning 360 degrees and sort of flipping upside-down in the process (if you've played the game you will know what I'm talking about), especially with a saucer as opposed to the original egg shape of the pod. What's more, I can't get as 3D a look as I'd like, because the ship and the spaceman share the same color palette; having only 4 colors per sprite to work with in the first place, the ship can only have one color other than yellow, blue, or transparency, all of which are needed for Spiff. This means that the saucer must be a solid red instead of the 3D shading you can see in the screenshot.

This will take a long time to complete, especially since I won't be spending all my time working on it. Technical issues may arise and ideas for the game may change, but I don't intend to abandon this endeavor. Eventually this should join the ranks of fan creations as "Spaceman Spiff: The Hunt for the Flying Tiger!"

A Squared Circle - I'm a Nerd

2008-10-10T13:03:00.000-04:00

My philosophy teacher likes to use circles and squares to illustrate contradictions in nature. There's no such thing as a square circle; the essence of a circle cannot be present in a square, and vice versa. Even God cannot square a circle, not because of a limitation on his part but because of the definitions of the two shapes.

When he answered somebody's question today he referenced the "squared circle" example. I doodled on my paper for two seconds and once again proved I'm a nerdy smart-aleck.

Jetman

2008-10-08T20:34:00.000-04:00

Wow. I just found out that Solar Jetman, a neat game for the Nintendo Entertainment System, is the third in its series. The first game was Jetpac, the second was Lunar Jetman, and both of them were released for an 8-bit PC back in 1983. Judging by screenshots, the first two games look like platformers as opposed to the space-flight gameplay of Solar Jetman. All three games are by Rare, although Jetpac and Lunar Jetman were released back when Rare was known as Ultimate Play The Game. I never would have guessed.

Obama's Economic Plan

2008-10-08T11:19:00.001-04:00

During the debate last night I thought I heard one of the candidates misspeak, swapping the vowels in "tax cuts." I suddenly got the idea for this picture:

Ah, the digital age of political cartoons... Don't worry, I do not intend for this to become a hobby. I just thought this would be funny. Feel free to spread this around; maybe by the end of the election the internet will be littered with it. I wonder how it feels to be responsible for for the mass presence of something like this...

Sims' City

2008-10-07T11:43:00.000-04:00

If we have any freak hurricanes, floods, or monster attacks, I'll blame this guy for turning "disaster mode" on.

The Accuracy of 8-Digit Calculators

2008-10-06T21:09:00.000-04:00

I just finished my last chemistry problem for this week's homework: find Avagadro's number using blah-blah-blah data about an 8-atom silicon cube. I wanted to get A's # as accurately as I could, so I decided to do the whole thing by hand. I thought, "My calculator can only work with 8 digits, so I'll do this with a pencil, take up a whole page, and get the answer as precise as possible!" The first step was converting X picometers to X centimeters cubed. When I finished multiplying 12-digit numbers, I went to the back of the book to check on my progress, get an idea of where I should be, and use the rounded numbers in the back of the book to see how precise the book's answer would be. I saw that I was 0.04 x 10 -22 off, but I figured that it was due to my superior decimal places. Wrong-o. My final calculation came to 6.10etc. instead of 6.02etc. I realized that my quantity of 0.000000000000000000000158151477991 cm3 was worse than a rounded 0.0000000000000000000001602 cm3. The extra precision I shot for was lost, probably to a single mistake, within the 12-digit multiplications that took me so long. Go figure.

School subjects make for fun conversations.

2008-10-05T20:22:00.001-04:00

I was at a late start-of-the-school-year homeschool picnic all day -- the one that was scheduled for the day hurricane Ike hit. I ate my fill, played volleyball and cornhole a bit, and overall had a good time. What I enjoyed most, though, was chatting with some other teens -- about school. We discussed science (one girl was working on biology homework at the time), teachers, languages, etc. When the topic of Latin classes came up, and we were complaining about the memorization of what declensions do what, I was able to share the creation of the phrase "Latina avibus est," which translates to "Latin is for the birds." (I gave up on learning Latin shortly after my dad came up with that.) I talked a bit about Mr. H's classes (theology, logic, philosophy, and ethics) and how they come together, the past knowledge getting better and clearer when you take the next course. For the laughs, I mentioned how I gave him the answer for something once and he asked how I knew it was true, to which I replied, "You told me." His response was, "Oho! This is philosophy class; that won't work any more!!" That led to the discussion of teachers, their personalities, and so forth. So many people don't enjoy school, but I find it to be a great subject for ice-breaking conversations.

I think too much.

2008-10-04T16:03:00.001-04:00

My brother and I watched some behind-the-scenes features for Raiders of the Lost Ark lately. The movie-makers encountered some difficulty filming the scenes with the snakes in the Well of Souls, because the snakes didn't behave the way they wanted. There was a clip of Spielberg holding a snake and talking to it, saying, "You like fire? You love fire... In the script you're supposed to hate fire. Why do you like fire? You're ruining my movie!"

I thought, "Well, yeah, they're cold-blooded. Fire would be a source of heat." Then I started thinking about the probability of the situation in the first place. Here we have a temple that's been buried for hundreds or thousands of years, and it's filled with snakes. Why would it be filled with snakes? Being cold-blooded, the Well of Souls would not be an ideal place to live. It's underground, providing insulation from the heat of the desert. When Sallah looked into it, his line should not have been "Why does the floor move?" If there were any snakes there, they would not have been moving. The temple would have been a hibernation ground, or something.

"You're thinking!" my brother said. "You're thinking! Stop thinking!" Hey, at least I don't think this much when I'm actually watching a movie, or I wouldn't enjoy movies.

Zelda meets Peter Pan

2008-10-03T18:46:00.004-04:00

*All of the following screenshots are results of using the levitation code*

They'll never find me up here.

Aw, how did you know?

Pick me up, mommy!

Uh, that thing had better not be my spirit...

Ah, garden baths.

That would be a figment of your imagination.

Um, Zelda? Ganondorf's sent half the castle to the fifth dimension. What now?

Any fries with that?

Spider Link, Spider Link...

The king sure is acting odd these days...

Me, scared of Ganondorf? Don't be silly. Um, is it safe to come down?

I feel like I'm in the clouds...

Rockman 2 Hacks

2008-10-03T14:54:00.006-04:00

Somehow, I was able to play Wii but not get on the computer last Saturday, so I started MM9 and reached Wily's fortress. Then I wasn't allowed to play Wii Sunday or during the school week, so I managed to snag enough free time to get on the computer Wednesday night and finish a Rockman 2 hack, but had to wait until today to blog about it. I am enjoying golf lessons, but together with doctor appointments on the same days, they sure take up a large block of time. Anyway, I have the time now, so I'm going to do a post on two great hacks of Rockman 2, the Japanese equivalent of MM2.

Rockman No Constancy

This was done by an expert Japanese hacker who had such talent that all the changes make for what could almost be an alternate MM2. There are totally new stages, and various enemies act differently (the crabs have shells that explode in a line across the screen!). All of the weapons have new looks and/or behaviors, and for those that are used the same way, things are still quite different because energy use, firepower, and enemy weaknesses are totally overhauled. The 8 robot masters are whole new monsters, with altered attack patterns at least (at most, you have Quickman turn into a little flame and bound around the room shooting eruptive fire all over the place). To top it off, the music is all different and feels like it was meant to be there. Besides these and a quickened buster, the game's mechanics are pretty much the same. The normal difficulty level is higher than hard mode in MM2. I think a fair comparison would be with MM9's stage difficulty; a bit harder in enemies and definitely in bosses. Now, if you use the patch for the hard version, Megaman has no post-hit invincibility time, the enemies take many more shots, etc. The hack's appearance is very cool, different, and coherent all at the same time. Some of the stages are meant to resemble environments from other games, but don't look out of place at all. Not one tune is unchanged, having been adapted from other games. While any hack might give a game a new look, few of them are as smoothly connected as this: from a specific standpoint, the tunes suit their stages; from a broad standpoint, the different stages and weapons complement each other. In fact, the hack's sole fault lies in two boss doors that simply sit as edges to the walls of their stages, blocked off and purposeless. Whether these were left in accidentally, due to ease of hacking, or by a telltale result of imperfection in the patching, I don't know. What I do know is they don't stick out too much and in the long term an esthetic view of the hack dismisses them, as they are of a less esthetic nature than a technical one and don't disrupt anything in the latter regard.

In conclusion, this is an awesome hack that achieves one of the greatest feats in the world of ROM hacking: everything is new, yet it feels like more of the same stuff. A Mega Man fan could almost forget it's is not an official game. I highly appreciate this completeness.

Rockman Deus Ex Machina

This hack changes more than Rockman No Constancy. A different hacker concocted this, but the music is remade by the creator of RNC. Like the previous hack, this one has everything from new weapons and stages to altered enemies, as well as stuff you've never seen before, like a room that reverses the boss's position when you set foot in it's half of the screen.

There are several different patches, and after a brief analysis, here are the differences I could find just by entering a stage:

Rockman-Deus Ex Machina- -- This is obviously the "normal" patch. This is the one I played and am reviewing.

Rockman-DEM-(easy) -- I couldn't distinguish this from the previous patch.

Rockman-DEM-(hard) -- This makes the stages worse than ever, with added pits and such. To compensate, when Megaman gets hit, he hurts/destroys the enemy, and there's no recoil.

Rockman-DEM-(static) -- I'm not sure what this one does compared to the "normal" one other than leave your buster unchanged; all of the above patches hack the buster so that it moves a bit slower and 4 shots can be on the screen at once.

hard-body -- This one gives Megaman the bodily attributes he has in the hard version, and can be applied to the original game / most other hacks without problems.

FW;DEM -- I don't know what this does other than add "FW DEM" to the title screen.

The difficulty level is sky-high, particularly through treacherous stage designs. The 8 robot masters behave more closely to their originals than they do in RNC, although that doesn't make them easy. More of the weapons have been altered in bigger ways (with the exception of Quickman's, which RNC entirely redid), including the three items, which now make you "fly" and turn invincible. Some of the enemies are changed a lot, and a couple of the bosses in Wily's fortress are fought in conditions you'll never forget. The final boss is a fast, deadly terror with no particular weakness, and you may run through half your weapons by the time you blow him up. For the record, it is possible to beat him without the turbo-button; but success via button mashing requires you to shoot about as fast as the turbo anyway, so go ahead and "cheat" rather than get carpal-tunnel.

(As a side note, Mega Man X fans will appreciate the final boss. I'll say this much: if the final boss wasn't a hologram [I don't think anyone's bothered changing that] and Megaman was destroyed by it, this game could be the bridge between the MM and MMX series. I don't know what the storyline to the hack actually is, because I can't read Japanese!)

The only thing this hack lacks is that feeling of coherency. Between a happy-feeling, music-note-throwing Metalman here and an NES-quality rendition of FF6's boss theme there, the diversity of this hack's contents seems a bit like mixing LEGOs with Lincoln Logs.

If you're an old-school Mega Man fan, you should definitely try these. Rockman No Constancy is a quality hack that anyone who wants a Mega Man 10 already should check out. I don't recommend Rockman DEM if you found MM9 difficult, but if you're up for a challenge, go for it!