Recently I've been interested in Arcana Heart 3, a fighting game made by Examu that was ported to PS3 and XBox 360 by Arc System Works. Previously I had 0 interest in the game other than Parace, the boss character to the second game, but 3 is a different story because it actually got a good port. In the case of the first game, the PS2 port was actually ok but the game itself was just awful so I didn't really care about it. Arcana Heart 2 was actually very good but the PS2 port was complete garbage, suffering from slowdown and not even being the most up-to-date version(most recent ver of AH2 was 2.6 while PS2 port was something else). AH3 gets a next gen port that is pretty much arcade perfect, and it even has online play.
Now, even though I mention AH3 getting a good port, it doesn't actually affect me because I don't have any next gen systems! However, someone went and ripped the arcade version of AH3 onto PC, allowing cheapskates like me to play it. So I've been trying to learn the game, using the PC rip's training mode, which actually shows hitboxes. Unfortunately I can't play my 2 favorite characters in the game, Parace(who is a boss) and Mildred(who is an arcana), so I have to settle for 3rd best with Scharlachrot. After learning some of the intricacies of the game, I have to say it's pretty fascinating. I used to think Arcana Heart was really boring from watching random videos, but now that I kind of understand what's going on it's much better. Sadly I haven't gotten the chance to play against people in this game that much though. There are several elements in the game that remind me of GG, and I really like the variety that the characters + arcana combinations give.
In GG related news, recently there have been a lot of compilation vids of the best moments in Guilty Gear on nico. There is a user on nico who is basically compiling the best moments from Mikado GG vids, and also compiling the best casual matches from the Mikado stream. There's also a few other compilation vids that people have made from Gamechariot and other arcades. I've been thinking of making a big GG compilation video from all of the games for a while now, so those videos inspired me a bit in actually getting up and making my video. Anyway, I ended up making two of them. You can read a longer explanation at Norematch.
Best moments in Guilty Gear
Best moments in Guilty Gear - Volume 2
The world of Melty has been pretty interesting recently. Current Code was surprisingly short lived, as 1.05 has come out, bringing with it new balance changes, new system additions, and a new character in the form of Powerd Ciel. I'm pretty surprised CC was updated so quickly, since I felt that the game was positively received by the community. The tier list for CC was:
新宿勢の一部でランクを作成したので貼りにきました。
各自Ｓ～Ｃの４段階にに分けてランクを作ってもらい、Ｓ４点、Ａ３点、Ｂ２点、Ｃ１点で加算したのが以下の結果になりました。参考までに。
参加者
キリヤ、ジン、SAT、新屋、じゃむ、かんな、丸やん、芳乃
Ｓ：赤主(32)、シオン(31)
Ａ：さつき(26)、秋葉(25)、ワラキア(25)、シエル(24)、志貴(24)
Ｂ＋：琥珀(20)、リーズ(20)、七夜(20)、キシマ(20)、ヒスコハ(19)、式(19)
Ｂ：都古(18)、アルク(17)、青子(17)、翡翠(16)、ネロ(16)
Ｂ－：Ｖ(15)、白レン(15)、ワルク(14)、ロア(14)
Ｃ：レン(12)、メカ(11)、制服(9)
点数以外の段階分けは適当に書きました。
Ｂが分かれてるのは、ＡやＣに変えるほどの差はないけど、多すぎて見づらいからです。
Basically this was made by 8 top players, where they were asked to rank the characters from S(4 pts) to C(1 pt). Points were then totaled and a list was made from them. The players that participated are Kiriya, Jin, SAT, Niiya, Jamu, Kanna, Maruyan, and Yoshino.
S VAkiha(32) Sion(31)
A Satsuki(26) Akiha(25) Wara(25) Ciel(24) Shiki Tohno(24)
B+ Kohaku(20) Ries(20) Nanaya(20) Kouma(20) Maids(19) Ryougi(19)
B Miyako(18) Arc(17) Aoko(17) Hisui(16) Nero(16)
B- VSion(15) White Len(15) Warc(14) Roa(14)
C Len(12) Mech Hisui(11) Seifuku Akiha(9)
One thing I found pretty interesting was that Kiriya only really had to ask 8 players. The previous "top player survey" tier lists made for earlier games always had 20 players because of disagreement about character placement, but it seems that in CC everybody pretty much agreed on all the rankings. I think the main point of disagreement I saw on the BBS was Ryougi's placement, as some people rank her really high.
Anywho, CC 1.05 is out, and it's going to get updated again soon! 1.07 is set to be released sometime during the summer, and it will have yet another new character in the form of Archetype Earth, who was a silly boss character introduced in the PS2 port of MBAA. I don't know how the Japanese community is reacting to 1.05, but it seems like many people in the American community don't like the changes. 1.05 brought about some pretty drastic changes, bringing back OTG relaunches from the doujin game days of MB, and allowing every character to do followup combos off of raw airthrows. In addition, the new character Powerd Ciel seems really strong in a Melty context, as the Crescent version has amazing normals, an air special that gives a hard knockdown, a ridiculous DP, and a projectile that she can throw out after knockdowns that is massive +f on hit and block. She seems almost like a GG character brought into the Melty system.
I think I'm one of the few players in the American scene that actually likes the new changes in 1.05. Melty's game being too air based and the obnoxious jumping were always my biggest gripes with the game, and I've always felt that the game didn't reward players enough for getting off neutral airthrows, so I love that 1.05 makes airthrows stronger as it takes care of both of these problems. Another somewhat minor change is that all walkspeeds are much faster, which I like as well because it makes the ground game more important. I'm pretty indifferent towards the OTG relaunches; they were extremely broken in the earlier versions of Melty, but AA has gravity and hitstun decay so it should help balance out the craziness. So far, nothing broken has been discovered with OTGs so I think it'll turn out ok.
I find it pretty sad nowadays how out of touch I am with popular music. I just follow amateur singers on nico now haha. A lot of the singers I follow have actually gone and released albums recently: Wotamin, MARiA and Choucho got solo album releases under doujin circles, Yamai got two albums out on her major label, and MARiA ended up doing the opening theme for the Freezing anime.
I've also discovered the magic of timeshifting on nico, so now I can watch all those lives that get put on at horrible hours in my timezone(lol 5am). For the nico singers, it's pretty interesting to hear them perform during the namahousous without the help of mixing and post-production. [TEST] from the nico band [Mint] recently did an all acoustic live with Choucho and Sariya-jin that I enjoyed a lot, so I ended up restreaming it so that I could archive it(since nico only archives stuff for a week). It's kind of like a Macross Frontier appreciation themed performance.
http://www.justin.tv/psyblade/b/285367944
OVZ(Otaku-Verse Zero) is this Youtube show I've been following for a while. It has Yuu Asakawa in it speaking English, which is pretty awesome in itself. The show got off to a rough start but it's pretty good now in its 2nd season. This is easily my favorite episode so far, since it details a live show that Yuu Asakawa produced for herself sometime in January. It's pretty surreal to hear Megurine Luka's original voice actress singing some of her signature songs.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Ao Oni again
So a lot has happened in the world of Ao Oni since the last time I posted. Ao Oni is now at version 6.22, so the game is completely different again, with a new mansion layout, new puzzles, and new ending. It requires RPG Maker XP RTP, and to set your non-unicode language setting to Japanese. In addition, the 6.xx series of the game lets you name the main character.
Most importantly, there is an official English and Italian version of the game, which shows just how popular Ao Oni has gotten. I think the creator of the game owes Gami and Fuhiki a lot, as I doubt this game would have gotten anywhere near as popular without their legendary jikkyou play.
I've actually played through 6.22 already, and I think it's pretty good. Compared to the earlier versions of the game, the difficulty level of 6.xx is relatively easier and the mansion is a bit smaller as well. There are some cool new things added in 6.xx, but there's also some things that I wish were preserved from older versions, especially 5.xx.
Something I mentioned earlier was the new option in version 6 to name the main character. There are actually some cool easter eggs with this. Everytime you beat the game Hiroshi tells you a different name to input that can change the game in some way. One particular name is SOUTHPARK which leads to this...
I've also found a really funny English Let's Play of Ao Oni 6.22 by MikeNnemonic on Youtube. Unfortunately he's not actually playing the game for the first time in the videos, but he brings a very unique interpretation to the game that I think is worth watching through haha.
Finally, since the game has gotten so big, someone has gotten around to archiving all of the previous versions of the game. Pretty nostalgic, if you want to go back and play the version that Borzoi Project did or want to see how different(and ghetto) ver 1.0 is compared to what we have now.
Most importantly, there is an official English and Italian version of the game, which shows just how popular Ao Oni has gotten. I think the creator of the game owes Gami and Fuhiki a lot, as I doubt this game would have gotten anywhere near as popular without their legendary jikkyou play.
I've actually played through 6.22 already, and I think it's pretty good. Compared to the earlier versions of the game, the difficulty level of 6.xx is relatively easier and the mansion is a bit smaller as well. There are some cool new things added in 6.xx, but there's also some things that I wish were preserved from older versions, especially 5.xx.
Something I mentioned earlier was the new option in version 6 to name the main character. There are actually some cool easter eggs with this. Everytime you beat the game Hiroshi tells you a different name to input that can change the game in some way. One particular name is SOUTHPARK which leads to this...
I've also found a really funny English Let's Play of Ao Oni 6.22 by MikeNnemonic on Youtube. Unfortunately he's not actually playing the game for the first time in the videos, but he brings a very unique interpretation to the game that I think is worth watching through haha.
Finally, since the game has gotten so big, someone has gotten around to archiving all of the previous versions of the game. Pretty nostalgic, if you want to go back and play the version that Borzoi Project did or want to see how different(and ghetto) ver 1.0 is compared to what we have now.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Ao Oni
Another hilarious jikkyou play on nico, this time it's a poverty horror game made in RPGMaker called Ao Oni, or blue demon. The premise of the game is pretty similar to Clock Tower: you and your friends get lost in a big mansion and you have to solve some puzzles and find the way out, all the while getting stalked by a monster.
The guys doing the commentary on their playthrough are がみ(Gami) and ふひきー(Fuhiki), who are part of a group called Borzoi Project. They do a lot of jikkyous, but this is undeniably their most popular one by a large margin. They also have a fairly popular jikkyou of another RPGMaker game called Doraemon Nobita no Biohazard, which as its name suggests, is a crossover of Doraemon and Resident Evil.
The demon in this game is a big blue man who kind of looks like Obama if he was part of Blue Man Group. Sounds silly, but the game is surprisingly scary and the Ao Oni has quite a bit of personality. Gami and Fuhiki's reactions are priceless and their screams of terror transcend linguistic boundaries.
It's also been mirrored on Youtube
Playlist
FadedLily on Youtube is also doing an English translation of the Borzoi Project jikkyou, but so far he's only gotten the first 3 parts up.
FadedLily
Ao Oni has actually gone through several revisions. The version of the game that Gami and Fuhiki are playing is 2.xx, while the newest version of the game right now is 5.2. Every version of the game is extremely different from the others, too: different characters die, the endings change, and even the layout and size of the mansion changes. I remember in Ao Oni v1.0, three characters actually survive in the end, and there's a really scary segment where the main character look down a well and sees the Ao Oni frantically climbing up the rope with all its teeth out.
Ao Oni has apparently gotten so popular among English speakers that there's now a full English version of the game! It's for version 5.2, and requires RPGMaker to run properly.
The guys doing the commentary on their playthrough are がみ(Gami) and ふひきー(Fuhiki), who are part of a group called Borzoi Project. They do a lot of jikkyous, but this is undeniably their most popular one by a large margin. They also have a fairly popular jikkyou of another RPGMaker game called Doraemon Nobita no Biohazard, which as its name suggests, is a crossover of Doraemon and Resident Evil.
The demon in this game is a big blue man who kind of looks like Obama if he was part of Blue Man Group. Sounds silly, but the game is surprisingly scary and the Ao Oni has quite a bit of personality. Gami and Fuhiki's reactions are priceless and their screams of terror transcend linguistic boundaries.
It's also been mirrored on Youtube
Playlist
FadedLily on Youtube is also doing an English translation of the Borzoi Project jikkyou, but so far he's only gotten the first 3 parts up.
FadedLily
Ao Oni has actually gone through several revisions. The version of the game that Gami and Fuhiki are playing is 2.xx, while the newest version of the game right now is 5.2. Every version of the game is extremely different from the others, too: different characters die, the endings change, and even the layout and size of the mansion changes. I remember in Ao Oni v1.0, three characters actually survive in the end, and there's a really scary segment where the main character look down a well and sees the Ao Oni frantically climbing up the rope with all its teeth out.
Ao Oni has apparently gotten so popular among English speakers that there's now a full English version of the game! It's for version 5.2, and requires RPGMaker to run properly.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Midori no Akuma
This is one of the funniest video series I have ever seen on Nico. They started in the end of 2008, but many English speakers discovered these videos in the middle of 2010.
To begin, it's a jikkyou play, which is kind of like the "Let's Play" series of videos that you see all the time on Youtube, where people commentate while playing through games. Two Japanese dudes commentate themselves playing through Super Mario 64. Except that they are playing the roles of 2 samurai from the Bakumatsu period, 坂本龍馬(Sakamoto Ryoma) and 西郷隆盛(Saigo Takamori). They speak in an odd dialect of 19th century Japanese, and talk of Mario-samurai's quest to defeat the Midori no Akuma(aka green demon).
Basically they invent a game within Super Mario 64 where throughout certain levels, they activate a 1UP mushroom and attempt to clear the level by gathering all 8 red coins and the star, while being chased down by the "green demon". Except that I remember the 1up mushrooms would actually run away from Mario when I played, so maybe this is something exclusive to the Japanese version of the game. In any case, it's quite a spectacle and it's amazing what that little 1up mushroom is really capable of.
Introduction and playthrough of Bob-omb Battlefield
Cool, Cool Mountain
Whomp's Fortress
Shifting Sand Land
Someone also uploaded them on Youtube as well
Playlist
To begin, it's a jikkyou play, which is kind of like the "Let's Play" series of videos that you see all the time on Youtube, where people commentate while playing through games. Two Japanese dudes commentate themselves playing through Super Mario 64. Except that they are playing the roles of 2 samurai from the Bakumatsu period, 坂本龍馬(Sakamoto Ryoma) and 西郷隆盛(Saigo Takamori). They speak in an odd dialect of 19th century Japanese, and talk of Mario-samurai's quest to defeat the Midori no Akuma(aka green demon).
Basically they invent a game within Super Mario 64 where throughout certain levels, they activate a 1UP mushroom and attempt to clear the level by gathering all 8 red coins and the star, while being chased down by the "green demon". Except that I remember the 1up mushrooms would actually run away from Mario when I played, so maybe this is something exclusive to the Japanese version of the game. In any case, it's quite a spectacle and it's amazing what that little 1up mushroom is really capable of.
Introduction and playthrough of Bob-omb Battlefield
Cool, Cool Mountain
Whomp's Fortress
Shifting Sand Land
Someone also uploaded them on Youtube as well
Playlist
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Random
Recently I've been playing EFZ again, after watching some of the new videos that the Kaori player Nagisa put up on his mylist. I forgot how hype this game was. Sadly, playing the game is a pretty mixed bag for me, probably because 1)I hate the command interpreter and 2)My character Akane is really really hard. Especially since nobody plays this game in SoCal anymore, I pretty much have to netplay it, so it just makes the experience really not enjoyable. The EFZ netcode was considered pretty good way back when it was first made, but it's pretty dated nowadays with stuff like GGPO and Caster available. I wonder if the game would get a revival if there was an EFZCaster.
bell has recently been doing a lot of work on Mizuumi, nearly tripling the amount of wikis that were originally there, upgrading Wordpress and getting a really nice theme, and restructuring the forums. It kind of inspires me to go work on my own sites more, since I've been neglecting them recently.
And some nice covers that I've found since the last update
Calc.
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: ジミーサムＰ(JimmyThumb)
うさ(Usa) cover
Calc. is a really cool song, but I haven't really found any covers of it that really stand out significantly over the others. Usa's cover is really popular, though.
Sing my Love
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: 40mP
【蓮】(Ren) cover
Sing my Love is a somewhat obscure song, though I never really understood the reason why. There aren't many covers of it, and even though it's originally written for a female(Miku), Ren does a really nice job with the song.
SPiCa -HPT ReACT-
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: Headphone Tokyo
MARiA cover
MARiA is pretty amazing, and she's supposedly a professional singer under the name Mizuhashi Mai. I actually don't like the original SPiCa that much, but this rearrangement is great.
ローリンガール (Rollin' Girl)
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: wowaka
yonji cover, Guitar Rock arrange
I have no idea what this song is about, but it's very popular and there are a lot of good covers for it. This is probably my favorite one, and the rock arrangement is a really nice touch.
さよならメモリーズ (Sayonara Memories)
Original Artist: supercell
irony cover
irony is a pretty obscure nico singer. Her most popular cover is for the opening theme of the Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai anime, which shares the same name as her alias. Her voice has a really eerie resemblance to Gazelle/nagi's, and if it wasn't obvious in her other covers it's definitely obvious in this one. I couldn't even tell the difference from the original song from the first few seconds.
bell has recently been doing a lot of work on Mizuumi, nearly tripling the amount of wikis that were originally there, upgrading Wordpress and getting a really nice theme, and restructuring the forums. It kind of inspires me to go work on my own sites more, since I've been neglecting them recently.
And some nice covers that I've found since the last update
Calc.
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: ジミーサムＰ(JimmyThumb)
うさ(Usa) cover
Calc. is a really cool song, but I haven't really found any covers of it that really stand out significantly over the others. Usa's cover is really popular, though.
Sing my Love
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: 40mP
【蓮】(Ren) cover
Sing my Love is a somewhat obscure song, though I never really understood the reason why. There aren't many covers of it, and even though it's originally written for a female(Miku), Ren does a really nice job with the song.
SPiCa -HPT ReACT-
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: Headphone Tokyo
MARiA cover
MARiA is pretty amazing, and she's supposedly a professional singer under the name Mizuhashi Mai. I actually don't like the original SPiCa that much, but this rearrangement is great.
ローリンガール (Rollin' Girl)
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: wowaka
yonji cover, Guitar Rock arrange
I have no idea what this song is about, but it's very popular and there are a lot of good covers for it. This is probably my favorite one, and the rock arrangement is a really nice touch.
さよならメモリーズ (Sayonara Memories)
Original Artist: supercell
irony cover
irony is a pretty obscure nico singer. Her most popular cover is for the opening theme of the Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai anime, which shares the same name as her alias. Her voice has a really eerie resemblance to Gazelle/nagi's, and if it wasn't obvious in her other covers it's definitely obvious in this one. I couldn't even tell the difference from the original song from the first few seconds.
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