Translation Troubles

I generally try to avoid topics like this that involve identity politics but given that the guy on the bad end of this story is a dude who translated a number of Megami Tensei games, I at least want to throw my two cents into the sea of lava rage that is this situation.

First, and I kind of can't believe I have to clarify this kind of thing, don't call people nasty slurs.  Even  if you don't like the person you're talking to, there's a million different ways to insult them without resorting to this crass, needlessly upsetting bullshit.  Get creative, get classy, there's no need to use this hyper offensive language because chances are it'll just cause the user more trouble than it's worth.

So the story is a guy who's name I'm reluctant to use since he's already had enough crap thrown at him, released a fan translation of Ganbare Goemon 3 for the Super Nintendo.  In that game a character in the original Japanese text refers to themselves as "new half", which this guy directly translated as "tranny"

Oof, to say the least.

This of course triggers Twitter to go up in arms about the whole thing and start throwing all sorts of anger and abuse his way, which then leads to him basically purging his entire Twitter account and leaving nothing behind but an apology for what happened.  Depending on where you stand on his apology, he says that he wasn't fully aware just how offensive that word was and he didn't mean to upset people (to paraphrase)

To some extent I understand where the mob is coming from, I get that if someone is using an extremely popular platform to spread genuine hate against people of any walk of life, it's probably better that it be shut down, people don't deserve to feel shitty about themselves just because some idiot has ignorant, backwards views about what is and isn't ok.  But the translator in question never came across that way, he's not some "alt-right neo Nazi" using Goemon 3 to try and normalize nasty slurs into the common lexicon, he's just a dude who made a bad word choice when working on a passion project.

I'd be willing to bet money that if it was pointed out to him, without the vitriol, his reaction would have been "oh really? so sorry! I'll change that!" but instead we now have a passionate translator out of the space and a nasty taste in everyone's mouth.  

Breath of the Wild First Impressions

Since about mid December I've been slowly working my way through Breath of the Wild on my Switch.  I've been playing it for a good while now, got a handful of things but I'm sort of teetering on the point where the adventure is really going to get into full swing so before I grab my Master Sword and get in some big ancient robots, I'll post some of my thoughts about this game so far.

First lets get some good things out of the way.  The game is HUGE, and I don't just mean in terms of actual game world but there's also a ton of stuff to do.  I've not even seen close to all of it but I'm constantly finding quests, big enemies, shrines, interesting looking landmarks, towns etc.  There is definitely a ton of fun to be had just running around and looking for things which, in fairness, is what I've spent the vast majority of my time doing with the game up to this point.  With a lot of these open world type games its easy for the world to be big but sort of barren of anything interesting (New Fallout for example) but Zelda just constantly has stuff popping up every which way.  You'll set a goal for some quest or to get to some shrine and then on the way there about 7 different things will distract you, but in a good way.

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But after you get over the vast and varied world, things tend to go downhill a little bit.  Zelda doesn't have your usual set of dungeons to explore and conquer.  In this game you have 4 divine beasts that you must go inside and defeat the boss of and then go hit up Hyrule Castle to go slap Ganons shit in.  Conventional dungeons have been replaced with Shrines which are sort of short puzzle or combat sequences which will net you a spirit orb.  4 spirit orbs give you either an extra heart or extra stamina, that choice is up to you.  Since exploring the world is so fun, the act of hunting around and finding these shrines are cool but the only thing that awaits you on the inside is pure disappointment.  Every single shrine is some kind of brain dead puzzle to solve or some shit, non threatening, easy as hell enemy to defeat.  This wouldn't be a problem if the shrines were not such a big part of the game but doing a number of shrines is VITAL to success.  For example getting the master sword requires you to have a certain number of hearts in order to pull it from its stone and so you have to do a button of shrines to get enough orbs to get those hearts.  Health in general is a problem in this game because of my next big gripe which is the combat.

The combat in Breath of the Wild is shit.  There's no if, ands or buts about it, it's just shit.  Partly it's shit because of the breakable weapons thing that the games decided to use and it seems that there isn't a weapon in the game that doesn't just shatter after about 7 or 8 hits.  This problem however is more of an annoyance than a real deal breaker but the deal is indeed broken when you consider the difficulty of combat.  A combat encounter will only really go one of two ways.  The first is that you fight the enemy for a bit and then it lands a hit on you and you die instantly, this is basically the only way to game over.  The second is that you will fight the enemy for a bit and he lands a hit on you and doesn't kill you instantly.  In this situation the enemy has literally no chance of winning the encounter because if your health becomes critically low, you can just chow down on one of the hundreds of steak skewers in your pockets or just spam apples until you are full HP again.  All this challenge (or lack thereof) means is that there exist little pockets of Hyrule that you can't go to yet until you find either enough shrines to get enough hearts or until you get armor strong enough to make sure you don't die in a single blow, after that, every single combat encounter in this game is free.

The tedium of the shrines and the atrocious combat are my two BIG gripes with this game but I'm fully aware I'm only scratching the surface.  I've not done any of the divine beasts yet and there seems to be plenty of stuff dotted around the world that might make up for these two glaring problems by the time I get to the end.  I don't hate this game, but I think that all the hype I encountered before getting my Switch made me think I was in for something really special when all I seem to be getting right now is a mediocre open world action adventure.

I'll do another post after I finish it to see if my opinion changes at all

February/March Stream Marathons

Over 12 hours of Sekiro was successfully completed and while I didn't come anywhere close to finishing the game, we all hand a grand old time watching me beat bosses in the exact opposite way that the game wanted me to do it.

Now, thanks to some extremely generous donations made at the weekend I can now announce the marathons for the next two months!  

February will be the NES Wheel 12 hour mini marathon.  Basically the same as my usually scheduled NES wheel but for 12 hours over a weekend instead of a 2 hour slot on a weekday.  Exact dates are still to be decided and I'll announce on Twitter (@Taurinensis) once I've made the plan.

March 1st however, will be a little bit more interesting.  The marathon will be another 2 players 1 controller with Pithoui only this time, instead of Megaman 4 and 2 very easy games, we will be doing all the classic Megaman games back to back to back.  Megaman 1 through 6, 2 players, one controller.  As a stretch goal, if we get another 100 pounds for the charity we will add Megaman X on the end of the marathon!  So tune in for some absolute madness in March

Don't forget you can see these marathons AND regularly scheduled streams at 

www.twitch.tv/taurinensis

Speedrun Goals For 2020

After watching AGDQ I've been sort of inspired to get back into speedrunning in a big way, so this will be a short post outlining what you can expect to see on the stream for speedrun nights and off schedule screwing around

There are 3 games that I currently speedrun that I want to improve the times on

Megaman 4
Megaman X
Silent Hill

Silent Hill especially because when I was new to running and didn't know what I was doing, my time for Good+ on Normal was very kindly added to the leaderboard by other Silent Hill speedrunners.  For a while it was technically a world record (in a misc category) but some other guys turned up and got faster times.  I'll probably be doing Bad+ on easy since it's the main category but it'd be nice to get back to a competitive time for that game.

I will also be adding two new games to my efforts.  The first being Panzer Dragoon Saga which is probably the longest run I've ever done considering an RPG but at time of writing the world record sits at around 4 hours and 44 minutes  so it's not SO bad.  With it being one of my favorite games ever I'd like to get a good time in this one.  The other game I'd like to add to my repertoire is Aladdin on the Super Nintendo.  The games short and the runs I've seen are pretty interesting and it's a really fun little platformer.  It's also short as hell, I finished it in just a couple of hours for the first time in a bar a while back.  It won't be a focus but it'll be cool to give it a go.

I might be stretching myself a bit thin running five games at once but I tend to burn out easy after a pretty short time so keeping a nice rotation going will stop me getting too bored too quickly.  Plus my copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga is sitting in the aforementioned bar so I'll probably be able to do ACTUAL runs of that game once a week since emulator isn't allowed.

Catch these runs and all the other streams at www.twitch.tv/taurinensis

My Friend Pedro

Just before my winter holiday started I had the joy of playing through My Friend Pedro on PC and while it is a simple game, it's an extremely fun one that you should check out.

There isn't too much of a story to speak of in Pedro, you wake up in some place and get told to kill dudes by a Banana.  I think you're trying to get revenge on someone but I don't really remember since it was early December when I finished it but the story is basically just background noise as you run through stages shooting dudes and having your banana companion quip at you.

The gameplay however is where things get interesting.  At a basic level you are tasked with running through the stages from the start to the end, killing all the dudes along the way.  You are given a pair of pistols to do this with and you can find a bunch of other weapons on the way.  You are also given a bullet time mechanic to help you line up shots and avoid damage and if you are wielding two guns you  can use the right click to split your aim between two targets.  The game itself, at least on normal difficulty, isn't that hard to just finish, but where things get tricky is the scoring system.  You are given points for each kill, for each kill you make within a certain time frame you are given a multiplier for those points and on top of that you are awarded extra points for being flashy.  So for example, you COULD stand at a distance and pop at guys one by one and play it safe OR you could run into the room, flip off a wall, shoot and exploding barrel and use your split aim to headshot the two guys nearest to you in mid air for big score.  There's also plenty of pans, bouncy thingies and other environmental things to help you with the carnage.  Those who play nice and flashy are rewarded with a rank at the end of each stage AND the game gives you a little gif of your flashiest kill that you can share on social media.

There are a couple of stages that change up the gameplay style such as a bike chase and a part where you're falling off a building but these really just amount to auto-scrollers where you shoot a set amount of dudes and maybe fight a boss.  Each stage also has its own little gimmick which means that you have to juggle planning the best way through the stage to not die and trying to find a way to get the most score.

My Friend Pedro, while a little on the short side, is a great game with quite a bit of replayability between hunting for ranks and extra difficulty modes and at 15 pounds that's a pretty good deal for what you're getting.  So if you're into things like Hotline Miami and other arcadey type, over the top action games, give this one a try. Oh, it's also avaliable on Switch.

AGDQ 2020 Vods You Should Watch

AGDQ 2020 concluded on Sunday and they finished with a whopping 3.1 million dollars for the prevent cancer foundation!  GDQ holds a special place in my heart with it being the event that inspired this very website and while the last couple of years haven't really held my attention too well, this year really knocked it out of the park.  Here are a couple of the runs (that I caught live) that I think you should check out once they get uploaded to YouTube in no particular order

1. Animorphs

Strictly speaking I don't think this was a part of the Awful Games block that they include every year but every crappy game they did a run of this year was highly entertaining.  This run, however, had me snort laughing at my office computer like a lunatic.  The commentary from the runner was funny, the crowd was super high energy and there was a part where the entire room is chanting "PUNCH THE SQUID!" over and over during a combat sequence.  Bonkers game, bonkers run, worth a watch 

2. Trauma Center New Blood

I love the Trauma Center games, a series about weird anime surgery where ALIENS HAVE TAKEN OVER HIS BODY and doctors that can slow down or freeze time using nothing but the power of raw concentration.  The only thing more bonkers than the plot of these games is the INSANE level of skill put forward by the runner who was donning a nice set of scrubs during the run.  Not only did he play the game and play it fast, but he managed to get an XS rank (the highest) on most of the missions.  If you don't know anything about TC then it might be a little confusing but if you even have a passing knowledge of this game its extremely easy to tell just how incredibly skilled and precise this runner was.

3. Ocarina of Time 100%

Just when I think OoT couldn't get any more broken someone comes along and proves me very wrong.  The 100% run this year had some extra thing in its category that I think was called "no source requirement", meaning that the runner was not obliged to go to each location in the game to actually get the items he needed to fulfill the 100% requirement.  This means he's using bottles to write spritual stones in his inventory, duping NPCs to get heart containers, all sorts of far out stuff.  I remember watching the any% run of this game being done in 20 minutes or so way back when and thinking "damn, you probably aren't getting crazier than that" only to have my jaw completely on the ground every year the play this game.  It was followed up by a glitch showcase as well which was equal parts interesting and hilarious.  

4. Super Mario World "One Mind"

Some of you may have heard of doing a game "2 players one controller" where one guy takes the buttons and one guy takes the movement and they must sync up their gameplay in order to achieve victory.  I even did a 2p1c marathon with my good buddy Pithoui a while back!  One Mind however is a different beast entirely.  It's a rom hack where each player is using their own pad but they are both controlling a single Mario.  Every so often the sprite will switch between the Mario sprite and the Luigi sprite to indicate which player is in control so when he's red its p1 and when he's green its p2.  The idea is that if you are of "one mind" then the run won't look any different from any other SMW 11 Exits run but if you try to do anything even slightly different it's going to start screwing things up.  Also when I say he swaps, I don't mean every couple of seconds or something, I mean he's swapping CONSTANTLY at high speeds.  It's a really interesting run and I can't quite explain it well so just go check it out for yourself.

5. Super Metroid Impossible

The finale run of the event and the title really isn't kidding when it says "impossible".  This is such an intense run that I don't really want to say any more about it, it's basically the Kaizo Mario of Metroid but it seems that some of the stuff in that game makes Kaizo Mario look like child's play.  It stands out for me because, I'll be honest with you, I don't give a rats ass about Super Metroid speed running and yet when I saw this run in motion I COULD. NOT. bring myself to look away.  It was so intense that I even clapped wildly at my TV when he finished, I just couldn't contain myself.

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So there's five runs to start you off, go and dig through those VODs on YouTube or Twitch or whatever and find some other games you like.  There's a whole bunch of runs that I caught live that I've not mentioned in this list that were awesome and probably a whole bunch that I missed live that I'm going to catch up with as soon as I hit "post"

Roll on SGDQ, I can't wait!

January Mini Marathon

As mentioned in a previous post, even if there's no donation incentive marathon goal met, I'll still try and do some kind of mini marathon once a month.  Since no goals have been met at time of writing I'm announcing the mini-marathon for January.  Since it's following the stream schedule and therefore I get to pick whatever the heck I want for the variety stream, I'm going to roll with 12 hours of Sekiro.

I doubt I'll be able to finish it in a single sitting but my plan is to find a guide and get the names of all the bosses and try to do all that game has to offer before reaching the end.

I'm late to the Sekiro party but I'm extremely excited to finally be able to give it a full playthrough after all this time.  So, if you don't already, follow me at www.twitch.tv/taurinensis and come join me in my adventures in ye olde Japan.

The marathon will take place on the 18th/19th of January, hopefully I'll see you there!

Plans For 2020

Since my New Year Holiday at work ended and I'm back to the old grind stone I thought I'd take the time to let you fine people know some plans for Identity Gaming in 2020.

The Stream

Nothing huge really happening to the stream but  I'm hoping to do a marathon at least once a month this year.  What the marathon IS will be dependent on if anything gets donated for but if there are no completed goals I'll probably just do long versions of the current stream rotation.  In case you don't know what that is it's

Variety Stream
NES Challenge
Donation Requests
Speedruns/Variety
Challenges

Speaking of challenges hopefully we'll make short work of FF7 No Materia and I think before the years end I'd like to accomplish FFX Single Character, A souls game deathless and MAYBE depending on how well I can do the previous two, Undertale hitless? We'll see how that goes, maybe I'm being too ambitious there.

The Blog

The blogs been sort of sporadic and inactive since most of my efforts have gone into the stream.  I want to balance things a bit more and get a more consistent posting schedule.  Also I want to add more donation incentives and maybe start doing some actual giveaways to further incentivize charity donations.  I've been toying with the idea of moving from Blogger to a different service but this is a pretty good (and most importantly, free) way to write my silly articles.

YouTube Channel

Completely neglected for a long time now and I want to fix that.  I've got some ideas for play throughs and some other types of video but first I need to organize the channel and cut some of the crap that I uploaded in the sites very early days.  Don't forget if you donate for a playthrough and you'd rather have it for YT rather than done live, just specify that in the donation comment and I'll do it.

Expect maybe some video essay type stuff, some more Japanese arcade coverage and maybe even a hall of fame/shame type show if I ever get time to script anything.

Of course this is all just a rough idea of what I WANT to do in the coming year, I'm sure things will change or I'll have inspiration for more ideas and challenges in the near future.  Of course, on top of all this if we could smash those charity goals that would be even more awesome but just having your support for the above is more than enough <3

2020, lets go!

Windjammers

If you follow the site/twitter/twitch much you'll know that I have an absolutely massive backlog of games to get through and because the list is so huge, it's not very often I allow myself to just sit and enjoy more simple games that don't really have an "ending" as such.  Sure, there's a single player mode in Windjammers where you beat all the characters but in a "sports" game like this or a fighting game, finishing it isn't really the focus so titles like that tend to fall by the wayside for me.

That said though, I recently sat down at a friends place and just enjoyed some good old fashioned arcade action and one of the games we spent a pretty significant amount of time on was Windjammers and good Lord is it amazing.

Windjammers is an extremely simple game since essentially it's just a supped up version of Pong.  There are 6 characters to chose from that each have a different power and speed stat and then you play up to 3 sets of 30 seconds each (by default) trying to throw a frisbee into the goals at the end of your opponents side of the court.  There are 3 point zones and 5 point zones and you can also score some cheeky points by making your opponent fail to catch the frisbee.  Each character also has a sort of special move where they will charge their throw and then launch the frisbee in some kind of physics defying way.

That's basically it, there's some other things like being able to throw the frisbee crazy fast and a couple of times me and my buddy got the frisbee to sort of curve in a weird way but we weren't playing long enough to really figure the specifics of those moves but for the most part that's the entire game.  Like Pong, Windjammers, especially when played with a friend, is the kind of game you can just kick back and play for a good few hours without it getting boring.  It's easy to play and understand too which means that it also makes for a pretty good party game.  Matches are short so there won't be much sitting around, it's fast paced and occasionally some crazy stuff can start happening once both players start launching supers all over the place, it's an all around solid experience.

My only real criticism of the game is the price tag.  It's available for PS4 with a price tag of $15 which is a little steep considering how bare bones it is but if you're the kind who has guests around a lot to play games, this is a great one to break out and it's something that even the less experienced members of the group can enjoy right away.  Also considering it was originally released as an old arcade game, the price tag won't be an issue for....certain users.

It doesn't look like much at first glance but Windjammers is easily some of the most fun I've had with a multiplayer game in a long time.  Grab a copy, grab some friends and go have yourself a grand old time.