Tag: video games

Hi praise for Hi Score Girl

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I really wanted to say that it was surreal to be binging on an anime again, as if it were the year 2000, but that wouldn’t be that accurate.  Within the last year alone, I watched stuff like the last two seasons of Initial D, and I watched through Kakegurui on Netflix, so I have in fact watched some anime beyond 2000.  Regardless, over the last week, I binged through an anime series, and as if I were 16 years old again, I’m looking forward to when Netflix gets the reigns to the rest of it.

I’m going to assume it’s either Castlevania (which I guess would have classified as anime) or all the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers episodes I’d been watching over the last few months that prompted Hi Score Girl to populate in my recommendations on Netflix, but I guess I have to admit that Netflix does kind of know me, because the preview got my attention enough to where I’d fast track and actually watch it, as opposed to putting it into my list and then never actually watching it until like a year later.

And I absolutely loved it.  Without question, Hi Score Girl is a love letter to old school video games and video game culture, and all too often, I felt rushed back to my own childhood watching the daily gaming mania and obsession with video games of Haruo Yaguchi.  I was super into Street Fighter II, and I poured hours upon hours into the game, and at differing points of my life, thought I was the best player in the world, until I went to the arcade and occasionally got my ass handed to me by players better than I was.  I can’t say I was as maniacal about improvement and wanting to be the best, but I’m still attuned enough to gaming culture to completely understand and relate to some degree.

Intertwined through all the gaming nostalgia is a sweet and fairly innocent love story between children growing up, and the trials and tribulations that come with different classes in school and society, the expectations of a family name, and the innate need and want to simply live our own lives.

Continue reading “Hi praise for Hi Score Girl” →

DDR the Movie: How bad can it really be?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For some reason, Konami has given the green light for a Dance Dance Revolution film to be created… with a general plot of how the “world is on the brink of destruction where the only hope is to unite through the universal language of dance.”  Or whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.  But yeah!  Film about DDR, a video game where people mash buttons in step to music, with their feet, in an attempt to emulate, dancing.

It goes without saying that this sounds like a colossal flop waiting to happen, but then again Konami, much less the entire video game industry hasn’t been known for success when it comes to translating gaming franchises into somewhat passable films, with few exceptions.

Really though, I’m extremely curious to know what kind of plot a DDR film could possibly have.  If anything at all, I’d imagine the world needing to all start dancing at the same time in order to save the world would have more of a detrimental effect on a planet, what with 6 billion people stomping their feet on the surface simultaneously, creating loads of seismic destruction across the globe, but whatever.  I really hope that there’s some shade thrown to DDR players that hold the rail, because I feel like they’re the ones that have effectively ruined the franchise by making it not so much about the dancing aspect, but the obsessive requirement to get high scores and succeed at clearing stages, even if it makes them look like kids learning to roller/ice skate for the first time in their lives by the way they lean and hold onto the rails for dear life.

Continue reading “DDR the Movie: How bad can it really be?” →

The retro gaming fad is stupid

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Let me clarify: I don’t have a problem with playing old video games on old consoles.  I do however, have a problem with video game companies throwing in the towel on creativity and effort, and simply repackaging old hardware and software, calling it retro and then selling them at prices that don’t exactly match the end product, all in the name of preying on the nostalgia of nerds like me and around a similar age.

Nintendo made ludicrous amounts money selling miniaturized versions of both the NES and the SNES systems that are basically glorified emulators with a safe set of classic games, most of which weren’t really that high in demand.  Sony decided to hop on the same boat and announced the creation of a miniaturized Piss1 console that will basically be the same thing with Playstation’s early library.

More recently, the software companies themselves have decided to produce such retro collections, such as Capcom releasing their Beat ‘Em Up Bundle, which is a bunch of ROMs of some of their unlicensed side-scrolling fighting games.  And just a few days ago, I saw that Konami has decided to re-release arguably the most successful Castlevania game of all time, Symphony of the Night.

Undoubtedly, all of these things have and will continue to make money, because if they were projected to not make money, they would never be happening in the first place.  But the fact of the matter is that I can’t help but think that this is all really stupid, and I can’t help but cringe at the idea of so many people, and plenty that I know personally, who are going to take the bait and spend absurd amounts of money for systems and games that we evolved and moved away from, for a reason.

Continue reading “The retro gaming fad is stupid” →

Photos: Dragon*Con 2018

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[2020 note]: this is unposted content from 2018’s Dragon*Con.  I actually sat on these photos for nearly two full years, because as my post-2018 Dragon*Con post alluded to, I had kind of a forgettable time, and I skipped out in 2019 to zero regrets, and had no plan on going to 2020, even if coronavirus weren’t a thing.

It wasn’t until I began to chronologically catch up to Dragon*Con 2018 did I realize that I never touched the RAW photos, and I broke my posting stride just to make sure that these didn’t slip through the cracks and never get posted.

Looking back at these photos, the sheer fact that there are only 60 photos should be sign enough of just how unenthused my heart was going into this convention.  I used to want to shoot hundreds of pictures, but a combination of my inability to enjoy the con, not really seeing things that make me want to shoot, and I guess being at the wrong places at the wrong time to not see the things I wanted to see, leads to a really small photo count.

But it’s the ones with friends that matter the most, and ultimately I’m okay if there’s more of those photos than of people I don’t necessarily know.

Continue reading “Photos: Dragon*Con 2018” →

Back in my day

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I read this article about parents who not only encourage their children to get good at Fortnite, but they’re actually paying “tutors” to “coach” them to become better at it, and I’m not entirely quite sure how I feel about it.  In one hand, we have a microcosm of how much the world has changed in which video games aren’t just more accepted than they used to be, gaming itself has become a viable occupation for people to strive for and a platform in which real, legitimate earnings can be made through.  But in the other hand, we have the basically the direct antithesis of the ideals and mentalities that people in my generation and older grew up through, where gaming was a waste of time, source of rotting for brains, and a definitive negative influence on our lives.

After reading this article, the question that popped into my head that I’ll probably query people on theFacebook about is whether they’d wish if they were a kid today, where video games are accepted and viable career options, but the world around them is psychotic, we live in a borderline police state, and school shootings are almost a reoccurring lottery in which one unlucky school seems to get chosen every few months for a tragedy.  Or, if they were content with the lives past lived, where video games were frowned upon by our parents, but we still played them anyways, and the world was slightly less psychotic and was for lack of a better term, safer.

All I can think of is that if I were a kid in today’s world, my parents would probably very much encourage my gaming habits, especially since it’s already been demonstrated, primarily in Korea, just how lucrative video gaming careers could possibly get.  Instead, I grew up in the 80s when Atari and Nintendo invented basically cancer machines that distracted, deviated and held back appropriate childhood upbringing, and was blamed for just about every negative behavior that children could possibly exhibit.

I remember reading in like GamePro or EGM, an interview by a Street Fighter II pro, that may or may not have been Justin Wong.  They talked about how they had a manager, and how they practiced SF2 for 3-4 hours a day, and all I could think about was if my mom found out I played video games for 3-4 straight, she would yell at me and tell me to go read a book.  No, this is precisely what occurred when I first got my Super Nintendo and was playing Super Mario World non-stop from when she went to work and came home, and I was in exactly the same place, still playing.

Continue reading “Back in my day” →

Imagine if Niantic started doing community days sooner?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I still play Pokémon Go. 

No shame.  I often ask myself on what’s going to hit 40 first between my age and my level in the game, it’s gotten to the point where the XP requirements for the next one are that gargantuan.  It’s literally taken me nearly ten full months to go from level 34 to 35, but I’m also not in the middle of an actual city where I can play to my heart’s content.  But the fact of the matter is that I still play, even if mythical gf and all my other friends who once played, don’t.

Turns out my brother has picked up the game, as introduced to him by his wife.  Although he is at pleeb level 25 compared to his wife and I, it was all I needed to know that I could have some actual human beings to play along with while I was down in Texas last weekend.  And as would have it, one of the days we had some time would be one of the game’s newer monthly featured modes, known as a Community Day, where a particular Pikachu would spawn like crazy for three hours, so it would be the perfect opportunity to stock up on them if a player’s had some difficulty in catching them in the first place.  Also XP gain rates are boosted during the time, to sweeten the deal for those less enthused about the featured Pikachu.

So we headed over to a still-in-existence mall, where we could have plenty of space to roam, Pika stops to spin, and most importantly, the air conditioning to not be walking around in a hot Texas summer day, and I was going to take part in my first Community Day.

At first, I was doing my usual thing of trying to be discreet about playing Pokémon Go, displaying my mastery of clandestinely throwing curveballs with one hand.  But then it became very apparent that all throughout the halls of the mall, especially as the clock started ticking closer to the official start of the event, that the vast majority of people milling about, were all also playing Pokémon Go.  So there was no more need for pretenses, and it was off to enjoy the game with the community.

Continue reading “Imagine if Niantic started doing community days sooner?” →

Hakus in video games

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was watching a YouTube video of a speed run of Super Nintendo’s Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, often considered one of the most challenging games ever, and midway through the game, the player triggers aggro of a Red Arremer Devil, or what Capcom and Google insist was always named “Firebrand.”  The speed runner ran for it, with Red Devil continuing chase, but as soon as the player passed a stage checkpoint, they immediately turned around, and jumped to their death, committing a suicide.  They restarted the level past where the Red Devil was and resumed running the game, without having to fight the flying nuisance.

I understand that in speed runs, speed is all that matters, even if it means strategic suicides in order to save some time.  This is a common practice in Zelda runs or any action/RPGs that spawn fresh lives or load states in strategic locations.  But it always feels kind of cheap to me that suicide is necessary, because perhaps it’s just me, it’s just more impressive if one didn’t have to literally kill themselves in order to beat a clock.

Make no mistake, Red Arremer Devils are extremely pesky throughout the entire franchise, as they have very erratic and difficult to combat patterns, and can absorb a good deal of damage before actually going down.  Furthermore, they’re virtually impossible to ignore and outrun, because to my experience, they will follow you until they die, or more likely, you die.  But they are not impossible to kill, and with a little bit of luck, the ability to read patterns and most importantly, patience, they can be handled.

However, patience is the very antithesis of speed runs, and in the case of a Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts run, it makes a degree of sense to kill yourself once you pass a checkpoint, and resume playing without being hounded by a Red Devil.  The difference between this tactic and strategic suicide in like Zelda is that this speed runner does it to avoid having to engage a difficult opponent, whereas in games like Zelda, it’s done in order to avoid having to traverse an entire dungeon in reverse in order to leave.

Continue reading “Hakus in video games” →