warning: i am going to geek out for a minute or two.
i have a list of my top five favorite video games of all time.
ChronoTrigger (snes)
Final Fantasy III (snes)
Legend of Zelda: A link to the past (snes)
Secret of Mana (snes)
Lufia II (snes)
i pretty much lost interest with most video games once the systems started moving away from cartridges. i cant stand the long load times, i dislike the emphasis on graphics rather than story. if i had my way, i would go back to all games being purely sprite based. there is a decent culture built around this same feeling. i know at least one friend who is in the process of writing and making his own pixel based RPG because he shares the same feelings.
So back story out of the way, a year or so ago, i bought the new release of Final Fantasy VI Advance. This is basically a rerelease of Final Fantasy 3, but with a new cleaned up translation done by Tom Slattery. It is pretty good, but i miss the old Ted Woolsey translation that was done for the Super Nintendo.
I have played this through three or four times since i got it and have had a hell of a lot of fun. recently i got the itch to play again and pulled it out.. in an attempt to get everything accomplished before the catastrophic point of no return mid game, i decided i would take advantage of a walk through. this is something i try to refrain from doing, but sometimes it is easier to reference someone elses work, especially if you have already hammered out a game ahell of a lot of times.
i am now officially glad that i did so. i have not even referenced what i got the walkthrough for yet, mainly because the writing of the introduction is incredibly incredibly enjoyable to read. i decided that i would back it up, post it for access here and throw a snippet of it up for reading.
i know that most people who visit thsi site will not be interested in this, but, as always, tell me it sucks and move along.. there is no reason to try to force you to read it.. you will be missing out though.. seriously..
if you want a great introduction, read the foreword,
for straight up humor, scroll down to the introduction excerpt,
if you want the whole kit n kaboodle, scroll down to the GameFaqs link
Foreword written by Imzogelmo
The year was 1994.
Until that time, humanity seemed a bleak existence — why, the 20th century alone saw the world ravaged by two world wars, a tense period known as the Cold War, and various regional conflicts. Finally, in the latter decades of the century, a new ray of hope emerged — the video game. Instead of fighting and killing one another, now mankind could do sovicariously or, if it was preferred, two could team up and do battle against
a fictional foe.
Like all forms of expression, the video game underwent many reformations (or generations) before the recipe became “just right.” Several genres of game sprang into being: platform games, shoot-em-ups, action/adventures, sports, puzzlers, fighting games, and RPGs. Each type of game appealed to a different
type of player or interest, and all the while advances were being made both in capacity of games’ data and complexity of the hardware used to run it. By the early 1990’s, the types of presentation that would work with a given genre were well-established, and players could afford to specialize in a particular genre without narrowing the field of games too greatly.
That brings us back to 1994, or, as Nintendo called it, “The year of the cartridge.” In that year, _Final_Fantasy_VI_ was released, and there was much rejoicing. The genre was RPG; the fictional foe was the evil Emperor Gestahl, and later, the pompous nihilist Kefka. Sure, there were other RPGs before it, but none that struck the perfect balance of character similarity vs. diversity, importance of storyline vs. gameplay, and plot linearity vs. non-linearity.
The depth of characters and robustness of the game engine (plus the time investment required to fully explore the nuances of the game) made this one of the highest-rated games in terms of replayability. Furthermore, the vivid graphics and moving musical score made it a complete experience, not just a game.
“But it is just a game!” I hear someone in the back say.
No, it is not just a game. In the fast-paced world where information is old as soon as it can be emailed, a video game generally has a very small window of time that it is considered new or exciting. For the early history of
video games that may not have been so true, but for the entire history of this game, the internet has been a very influential medium for discussion among players. For many fans of the series, this is still the greatest game, in spite of the hype surrounding some of its successors. So no, it is not “just a game” — it is a culture. And like many great cultures, it needs great works to explain, enhance, and record its story.
To document every piece of useful (and no-so-useful) data on a culture — that’s a difficult task. Many approximations have come forward, but always they have had inaccurate, inconsistent, or insufficient information. That is not meant as an insult on previous guides — like I said, it’s difficult. Much information has been uncovered through deliberate playing and replaying of the game, through hacking its internal code and data, and through combined effort of its many fans. This guide seeks to improve upon and surpass all
previous attempts. This guide seeks to be the great work of which I speak.
This guide covers _everything_.
an excerpt from Djibriel’s Introduction.
The original document was first released in November 2005, and we’re roughly two years down the road now. It may seem weird to some that ’simply ‘adapting the original 1381 kB file took about as long as writing the monstrosity in the first place, but you’d be surprised at how much work it is! Saint Jerome and Ted Woolsey would’ve shared my pain I’m sure, had they not both passed away 16 centuries ago.
At the very start of this document I’d like to mention that none of this would have ever happened if there weren’t so many righteous characters out there who advised my walkthrough to people on the message boards, who e-mailed me just to say they enjoyed the FAQ in one way or another or otherwise made me feel like I didn’t spend all this time just for personal enjoyment… I had a market to work for. Hotels around the globe replaced their Holy Bible with a printed version of the Battle Tactics Walkthrough. Rumors have comely women carry snippets of my guide in their panties to feel sexier and more confident. Like Stephen King and Robert Jordan, I had to struggle to deliver my ultimate work before Death’s ever-fickle hand took me in its grip. Before you, you see the results. The all-inclusive Walkthrough and Battle Tactics Guide for Final Fantasy VI Advance.
But what is this document you’re seeing? Does it really contain everything? Is it some kind of Hitchhiker’s Guide to FF VI Advance? The Encyclopedea CCLV VI Supremea? The Cosmog Sutra, where you’ll learn all about Tantric Gameplay (lasts for hours; winning the battle is NOT the main goal)?
Anyway, thats all i had. it was just well written and continues to be so all the way through the end.
link to the orgininal file on GameFaqs
The Advance Walkthrough and Battle Tactics Guide; WoB
Version 1.2
Djibriel, August 2007
~~~~~~~~~~~
“Read this” graffiti image found via google images in a subdirectory called ~epstein on OFB.net
lots of great images in both places, go check them out if you get the chance
drive by bukkake
i have no real statement to make here.
when i woke up this morning i received a text message from my kid sister. she is either eating frosting, egg whites, or ice cream, or at least i hope so.. the other possibilities are that she is in the middle of a very foamy epileptic fit, or she was a victim to drive by bukkake/money shots.
either way, the new haircut seems pretty nice…
meh.
Other | Comments (2)peeing out my butt and laurie notaro
this is a book review.. seriously…
this is a topic i never thought i would write about. i have never been one for reading on the toilet. i am an in and out man. run in, drop a deuce, flush, wash hands, run away before the smell melts your face off. there is a reason that people i am friends with have always referred to trips to the gas chamber as “fighting a brown demon” or a “holy war”. who ever comes out alive, is obviously in the good graces of their creator and not yet ready for the after life.
unfortunately, i have been sick for a couple days. i spent my whole weekend coughing, fighting off headaches, nausea, dizziness, cold sweats, hot sweats, acid stomach, sniffles, congestion, and poor judgment on movies to watch while ill… well, with the weekend gone and my work being direly short on people, i went into the office today, sick or not, i had to be there. loaded up on tylenol cold and sinus, my numb fingers and cloudy brain plowed through the day. nothing made much sense but i was a warm body where a warm body was needed. tylenol is my friend.. i know it is likely cancerous or will cause me to grow a third testicle on my forehead but hey, it did the trick when i needed it to.
fast forward to getting home after work.
it is now after 10pm. i have not been coughing for a while and i feel phenomenally better… GURGLE… what the hell was that… GURGLE….. ooooh, shit.. literally. tylenol is not my friend.. i think it is the cause of my adverse butt reaction. i hate you tylenol
into the bathroom i go.. i have no idea how long i am going to be in there. every time i think i will be able to escape the horror of it i find that i must stay. as i sat there preparing to cry and give up all hope on a life with a sense of smell, i realize that someone has left a book on the back of the toilet. i noticed it a couple days ago and it caught me off guard. i know people with stacks of magazines, books, even book shelves, let alone those little “bathroom readers”. never has something like this been in MY bathroom to stave off crying, i reached back and picked it up.
Laurie Notaro’s I Love Everybody (and other atrocious lies), True tales of a loud mouthed girl. henceforth to be referred to as ILE.
Laurie, she saved me from wallowing in the fear of my face twisting and dripping into a raiders of the lost ark “i am defying god and paying for it” panic attack. i opened her book and started picking through the pages. i have read it before, about a month and a half ago. i even meant to post something up here about it as it was truly hilarious and made me laugh out loud on the bus a couple times (to the dismay of all those around me).
ILE was a great read. no wonder it caught my attention again in times of great need. Laurie has written many other books, but this one was handed to me and saved me from having to buy it. of course, having loved it, not buying her books is out of the question.. that was a double not positive.
ILE is a collection of stories starting with her getting back into the work force after writing nothing but painfully dry descriptions of kitchen appliances. it details her trials she goes through when she decides to pay the homeless drunk guy to rip out trees from her yard and her inability to get rid of him. you get to learn about babies. you get to learn about crappy emails her sister sends her all the time, bosses who pull guns on you, kidney stones, addiction to pain meds, and blowing snot bubbles out of her nose
my favorite favorite favorite part of the book was the chapter about when she began to play”The Sims” on her computer. she is warned by a sales person to never ever play the game. when she buys it anyway, she is warned never ever to make a digital spouse to go with herself in the game. whew, she straight up ignores the advice and the 11 pages that follow detail all the glory of destroying a husbands self image, wasting hours of her life, fires, pee, fire, pee, job loss, fire, hatred, rotting food, crying, scolding, and death. all in a digital realm and not likely in that order.
so i put down the book when my bowels subsided from their desire to leave my liver and lungs in the toilet bowl, and i ran from the bathroom (hand washing would wait for the kitchen sink tonight). lightning did not pass through my eye sockets and other organs.. all in all my organs are safe.
cool huh?
Check out Laurie Notaro on Myspace
i am sure she will have links to her books for purchase, and if not, there is always amazon.
did i mention she lives in Eugene Oregon and i might have to stalk her?
site maintenance
i realized how terribly small some of the text on the site has been
each computer i normally work on has no difficulty displaying those font sizes with out causing a headache.
This morning however, i came on here and realized that IT IS TOO SMALL
font has been reformatted to be a standard 14px as opposed to the 11px that you are used to seeing
if you are still experiencing the small text, please press the refresh button on your browser and you should get the new settings
Site Maintenance | Comments (4)