Happy birthday to me! To celebrate, I’m sharing a fan art I recently fell in love with, as well as one of my fave remixes! Woo!
Pekepeke0, also known by her first name Ami, was last seen here during the Metroid Fan Art special. This morbidly perfect rendition of Heather from Silent Hill 3 astounded me with how wonderfully apropos it is. Dark, moody, sinister, and hellish; a fantastic interpretation.
The Ace Attorney series has some great music that has been radically improved by remixers. Case in point: DigiE’s splendid mixing of the ‘Gyakuten Saiban 3 · Trial’, ‘Pressing Pursuit ~ Cornered’, ‘Questioning ~ Allegro 2001′, ‘Questioning ~ Moderate 2004′, and ‘Turnabout Courtroom – End’ themes. This is amazing music that takes the limited GBA sounds and gives them a richness that the handheld could not replicate in its wildest dreams. It’s quite danceable, too!
Silent Hill – Silent Hill (Intro Theme, PS1, Konami, Akira Yamaoka)
Ah yes, it’s been all too long since we’ve talked about Akira Yamaoka. He almost landed a spot on Tunage this year, but I wanted to do some more obscure musicians. Anywho, this introduced gamers to the world of Silent Hill back in 1999, and what an intro! Beautiful instrumentation, Yamaoka’s amazing guitar work, and unsettling melodies combine to define the ominous feeling the series would become famous for. Stunning work.
There will be no Music Wednesday from me this week; sorry!
Though probably best known for “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”, I’ve always been more partial to this, the single released just after the aforementioned song.
No Virtual Console support this week for North America usually translates to me writing a VC No-Shows, but I’ve noticed a disturbing trend as of late. SimCity for the SNES disappeared from the VC the day after New Years, joining several other games that have been removed from the service over the last couple of years. I’d like to list all of these titles and keep this post as a running tally of what games used to be a part of the VC library and posit why they were removed.
NES
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Konami)
Date Removed – 1/26/2012
Why is it Missing Now? – When Konami and UBI Soft reached a deal to release Konami’s TMNT titles on various DL services, it signaled a hopeful flood of Konami’s classic TMNT lineup for the Virtual Console. Only Konami’s first NES effort made it onto Nintendo’s services, and all of the games issued across all consoles as part of that agreement are now no longer available. Tragic, as this game is easily the weakest of the bunch, and seeing the others would have been a boon.
Super NES
Simcity (Nintendo)
Date Removed – 1/2/2013
Why is it Missing Now? – I can only presume that Nintendo had some sort of arrangement with Electronic Arts to re-release their take on Maxis’ classic, and perhaps 1/2/2013 was the end of their agreement. Otherwise, I’ve got no idea! It’s apparently still available in Europe as of this writing.
Donkey Kong Country series (Nintendo/Rare)
Date Removed – All were taken down 11/16/12
Why are they Missing Now? – The sudden disappearance of one of Nintendo’s SNES stalwart franchises was a surprise last November. They did at least announce their removal in advance (unlike SimCity above). Screwattack posits that Nintendo has to work out a licensing deal with Rare (despite owning the franchise and characters) every time they re-release the SNES games, and they chose to let the Wii VC license expire. Hopefully, once the WiiU VC is established, these will return.
Super R-Type (Irem)
Date Removed – 3/30/2012
Why is it Missing Now? – Simple explanation here; Irem pulled all of their DL titles from Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft in March 2012 due to financial hardships and company restructuring.
Master System
R-Type (Irem/Sega)
Date Removed – 9/30/2011
Why is it Missing Now? – This was the first game to be dropped from the VC, and I imagine it was due to Irem’s monetary difficulties much as the later removals were.
TurboGrafx-16
R-Type (Irem)
Date Removed – 3/30/2012
Why is it Missing Now? – Try not to mind the parroting, but it is the same as Super R-Type above; Irem pulled all of their DL titles from Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft in March 2012 due to financial hardships and company restructuring. Expect to see it some more…
Vigilante (Irem)
Date Removed – 3/30/2012
Why is it Missing Now? – Irem pulled all of their DL titles from Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft in March 2012 due to financial hardships and company restructuring. *squawk*
Ninja Spirit (Irem)
Date Removed – 3/30/2012
Why is it Missing Now? – Irem pulled all of their DL titles from Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft in March 2012 due to financial hardships and company restructuring…*Wildcat wants a cracker!*
Legend of Hero Tohma (Irem)
Date Removed – 3/30/2012
Why is it Missing Now? – Irem pulled all of their DL titles from Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft in March 2012 due to financial hardships and company restructuring…and that’s the last time we should see that! (sorry for the bad parrot puns :p )
Silent Debuggers (Data East/G-Mode)
Date Removed – 3/1/2012
Why is it Missing Now? – G-Mode pulled three of their Data East-developed titles for the TG-16, but it’s unclear why exactly they did so. The NeoGeo and NES Data East titles remain on the service (Magical Drop 2/3, Street Slam, Spinmaster, Fighter’s History Dynamite and Burgertime [which was just released in December 2012!]), so who really knows what happened here.
Bloody Wolf (Data East/G-Mode)
Date Removed – 3/1/2012
Why is it Missing Now? – Another Data East-developed title yanked for the TG-16 by G-Mode for unknown reasons.
Drop-Off (Data East/G-Mode)
Date Removed – 3/1/2012
Why is it Missing Now? – Another Data East-developed title yanked for the TG-16 by G-Mode for unknown reasons. *cough*
That’s all of them as of January 5th, 2013. Let’s hope the purging ceases or that the Wii U VC opens up and brings back some of these along with it.
I may not have liked Odin Sphere as a game, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t like its character design. hf-zilch has done a splendid job re-imagining Gwendolyn in their own style, which has a nice dark edge to it. Very nice piece!
Tristam Village is one of my favorite gaming tunes for a town, and AmIEvil graced it with a relishing remix that capturing the melancholy and malice lurking within. The remix takes Matt Uelman’s original notes and amplifies the emotion tenfold, taking the single guitar and wails the original featured and expanding them with a wide array of instruments, giving it a grander quality. Well worth a listen!
What little I’ve listened to of Ellegarden has really impressed me. This is another standout track from “Eleven Fire Crackers”. If you want to know one of the key bands that is defining the character of Shi in my webcomic and elsewhere, look no further. I really do like the band, and would love to actually own their CD’s someday.
Minako Hamano joined Nintendo in 1993 and has become a major part of the sound of Metroid, composing tunes for Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, Metroid Zero Mission, Metroid Prime 3 and arranged one of the Metroid selections in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. She also very nearly provided Samus Aran’s first voiceover in Super Metroid! Yoshio Sakamoto determined that it was too “sexual” and cut it out of the final game (apparently he still has a beta that contains a nude sprite of Samus’ dying animation with Hamano’s voiceover still intact). She also has been involved in the Legend of Zelda (Link’s Awakening), Donkey Kong (Donkey Kong Country Returns), Wario (Wario World and Wario Land: Shake It!), Mario (Mario Kart: Super Circuit) and Pokemon (Pokemon Puzzle Challenge) franchises. She’s also one of the key musicians for the Brain Age series as well. Amazingly, despite involvement in nearly every important Nintendo property, Wikipedia denies her a page on their site due to not being notorious enough.
LVLs. is honored to put its spotlight on a talented woman who has been a massive part of Nintendo’s audio history. We hope you enjoy discovering the talent of Ms. Hamano.
Note – I’ve done what I can to decipher Hamano’s contributions off of these soundtracks. Due to Nintendo’s relative lack of proper discography information, however, I may be selecting tunes that were performed by her fellow composers. I apologize if I have done so.
Complete Discography (newest to oldest):
Brain Age: Concentration Training (2013, 3DS, Nintendo, Music with Shinobu Nagata, Megumi Inoue)
Wii Play Motion (2011, Wii, Nintendo, Sound Engineer)
Donkey Kong Country Returns (2010, Wii, Nintendo, Music with Kenji Yamamoto, Masaru Tajima, Shinji Ushiroda, Daisuke Matsuoka)
Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008, Wii, Nintendo, Composer of “Sector 1 – Metroid Fusion”)
Wario Land: Shake It! (2008, Wii, Nintendo/Good Feel, Music with Tomoya Tomita)
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (2007, Wii, Nintendo/Retro Studios, Music with Kenji Yamamoto)
Tetris DS (2006, DS, Nintendo, Music with Akira Fujiwara)
Brain Age²: More Training in Minutes a Day! (2005, DS, Nintendo, Music [Japanese version; the European release features music from Eri Yasuda, Ryoue Takagi, and Hirohito Tsujii])
Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! (2005, DS, Nintendo, Music with Akito Nakatsuka)
Daigasso! Band Brothers (2004, DS, Nintendo, Sound with other composers)
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (2004, Gamecube, Nintendo/Retro Studios, Special Thanks)
Metroid: Zero Mission (2004, GBA, Nintendo, Music with Kenji Yamamoto)
Wario World (2003, Gamecube, Nintendo/Treasure, Music with Norio Hanzawa)
Metroid Fusion (2002, GBA, Nintendo, Music with Akira Fujiwara)
Mobile Golf (2001, GBC, Nintendo/Camelot, Music Programming [Motoi Sakaruba was the actual composer])
Mario Kart Super Circuit (2001, GBA, Nintendo/Intelligent Systems, Sound with Kenichi Nishimaki, Masanobu Matsunaga)
Pokémon Puzzle Challenge (2000, GBC, Nintendo/Intelligent Systems, Music with Taishi Senda)
Famicom Tantei Club Part II: Ushiro ni Tatsu Shōjo (1998 [port], Super Famicom, Nintendo, Special Thanks)
Game Boy Camera (included Games) (1998, GB, Nintendo, Music with Hirokazu Tanaka, Kentaro Nishimura)
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX (1998, GBC, Nintendo, Music with Kazumi Totaka, Kozue Ishikawa)
There was no Christmas Wii VC tidings, but that’s okay I guess. I do have a recommendation to share no matter Nintendo’s apathy. :p
Shock Troopers (NGAC)
PRO – Excellent overhead run-n-gun action. Colorful graphics and smooth animation unite with nigh-perfect controls. Loads of replay due to three different paths to take (that also can be combined for more differences!) and two main methods of character selection (go solo or have three teammates you can swap depending on the circumstances). Surprisingly fair difficulty compared to many other SNK games.
CON – Some mildly annoying sound clips. The PS2 SNK Arcade Classics port has some slowdown, but I think that’s a localized case. Can get a bit monotonous.
OVERALL - The best overhead shooter I’ve played. Highly recommended for those who don’t have easy access to the Wii SNK Arcade Classics 1.
This is a new feature series I’ve been contemplating doing for a while. I want to explore gender and sex topics on LVLs., more than just merely reporting on what other people say. I’d like to build up some content on gender and sex in relation to games, and one way of tackling that is to look at how women have been conveyed in gaming. To begin with, I’d like to examine all of the heroines (and lady villains) that have appeared on the NES. There may be some overlap with Cultural Anxiety, but I’ll be writing each article specifically tailored around the women it features. I’ll talk briefly about the game, and spend time analyzing the character’s design and abilities. I’ll conclude with a brief synopsis of how effective I feel she is as a female avatar.
Study 1: Arkista’s Ring (American Sammy)
Arkista’s Ring is a bit of an odd duck. Sammy, a Japanese company, developed this game specifically for American audiences. It never had a domestic release in Japan. Despite that, it seemingly wanted to aim for Japanese audiences, given its box. The anime stylings of heroine Christine and her antagonist are hard to miss.
Christine is an elven archer, utilizing her bow to slay various creatures in a Zelda-esque action/puzzle game. The plot is fairly standard for the time; the realm of Arkista (thus “Arkista’s Ring”) has been plagued by a wicked Shogun who has stolen all of their treasures and plunged their land into chaos. Christine, a young warrior, offers her assistance to retrieve the stolen valuables and defeat the Shogun’s ninja army. She sets out to the Forbidden Castle, but first must make her way through the ruins of Arkista, a volcano, and the Ninja Dungeon. After defeating Shogun on Stage 31, the game loops. With Arkista’s Ring in hand, Christine can recover her health as she walks. This is good, as the game’s repeated levels are much more challenging to our heroine than before. Once 125 stages are conquered, you’ll see the ending…which isn’t much. I’ll cover that in a bit.
How does she accomplish that goal? She needs to clear out each map from the various foes before a key appears, which will grant her access to the next area. Plucky players can find hidden exits strung throughout the game. There’s a bevy of items to pick up that help Christine by boosting her arrow strength, armor, and other attributes, as well as expendable items such as potions, but ultimately it’s her versus the evil Shogun’s horde. Later levels will challenge players with extreme prejudice; enemies become more erratic, quicker on their feet, and can shoot through walls, making Christine’s efforts to succeed quite difficult. You’ll need to be quick with your reflexes and with your smarts if Christine is to survive.
Christine’s design on the cover isn’t the most flattering female design in gaming history. While her upper body is mostly covered (save an exposed midriff), her legs seemingly are barely protected by any sort of armor (from what I can tell). I’m not really sure what she’s wearing on her hips; is it a bikini bottom of some kind that features two layers, or is it a cloth that dangles in front of her “armor”? I can’t fully answer that, and the game’s chibi sprite doesn’t offer any further answers. Overall, I’d say that she’s not really challenging the status quo of pandering woman designs all that much. In-game, she’s silent as a mouse until the very end, where she declares “thanks for helping me save Arkista’s Ring”. Appreciative, sure, but that’s not much of a personality.
Ultimately, in my opinion, Christine is a respectable early female avatar. Her outfit is a little dubious, but she is a very strong character that builds up her talents as she plunges deeper into the labyrinths. She emerges as an accomplished heroine who can handle herself, and proves that she is able to rise up to a difficult challenge and protect her people. All and all, she is a character that showcases her power through her actions. A more than decent effort.
Artistic Discussion is not dead! No, it’s going to be more in-depth and cover more regions! It will now be a cultural look at box art, looking at North American, European and Japanese examples. I’ll still be determining what I personally like and don’t like each time. Expect this to pop up once a month now due to the expanded content.
Japan:
Good – Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber (N64, Nintendo/Quest)
I’m not too keen on the overall art style for this game, but everything came together so beautifully for this gorgeous box art. The main cast looks fantastic, the coloring is splendid, and it really evokes a sense of awe out of me. I wish the rest of the art looked this great, I really do.
Bad – ?
Um…what? This is one of those classic “WTF” covers Japan puts out from time to time, and I’m sure there’s a really good explanation for the “tracks that lead to golden breasts”, but hell if I know what it is. The modeling though is quite poor; the breasts aren’t even the same size or centered properly. XD Just a weird box that I wish I could comprehend.
North America:
Good – Azure Dreams (PS1, Konami)
I really like the mood of this one. Sure, the hero has dorky hair. But the vista he’s ogling makes me want to go explore it! It’s a lovely view of a desert area that is well drawn and thought provoking. Quite lovely, despite the awkward hairdo.
Bad – Big Mountain 2000 (N64, Southpeak Interactive)
This XTREME attempt at being badass is a trainwreck. Those two are some of the most obnoxiously cliched characters I’ve ever seen. The woman has a screwed up face, terrible hair and poorly drawn legs; the guy looks like a deranged nutjob who wants my soul. At least his proportions aren’t all wacked out like the poor lady’s. Trying too hard to be sick; making me physically so.
Europe:
Good – Burning Force (Genesis/Mega Drive, Namco)
I really like the mood this piece creates. The heroine here is excellently drawn (although in a rather pro-fanservice pose), as is her bike. She looks like she’s on the warpath, blasting at that enormous floating fortress ahead of her. The dynamic between the two is tense and well-executed. I’m intrigued to know what she’s doing attacking this ship. I’m sure it’s a simple story, but it is well told through this box.
Bad – Just Dance 4 (Wii U, UBI Soft)
Eww.
Seriously, this is unattractive. The poor woman in front looks like a clown/KISS fan/prom date. The background dancers look cheesy as hell. The white skin thing lost its appeal with the first bloody game. And how the fuck is this series still going? I played one of them briefly, and I felt like the biggest dumbass in history because I COULDN’T DANCE the way it wanted me to. It’s a broken series that needs to be retired, and its graphic style is atrocious. GO AWAY.
![Odin_Sphere_by_hf_zilch[2]](http://lvls.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/odin_sphere_by_hf_zilch2.jpg)
