Happy Commentary from a Cheerful Mind
Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 6:37 pm
I have begun receiving threatening emails, which I generally regard as a signal that it's time to update the front page. Since last I expulsed my admittedly harsh (yet thoroughly, 100% accurate) opinions upon this dusty, neglected corner of the infobahn:
Sonic Riders was released and has promptly joined the recent legion of Sonic games I have thus far been unable to motivate myself to play. If you count Sonic Gems, the total number is now up to 4, or 4½ if you include Advance 3, which I left unfinished. I am now farther behind in my Sonic playing than I ever have been since the inception of the series. However, though I may yet be ignorant to hoverboard-riding bird gangs and flame-wielding lavender cats, I am still quite on top of my hedgehogian lore. All of the museum pages up to Sonic & Tails 2 have been brushed up yet again, and I am, for the moment, satisfied with them. I've added some new info here and there, so if you haven't checked up in a while, it might be worth your time (relatively speaking) to browse through the museum articles through the year 1994. (Special thanks yet again to HarihariSonic of <a href="http://www.clavis.ne.jp/~sonic/segasonic/index.htm">Act Select</a>, whose relentless crusade to educate the masses in the most obscure knowledge of the entire Sonic continuum has allowed me to update the Gameworld and Music Maker pages with the same level of info found elsewhere on the site.)
Actually, in regards to the <a href="/sonic/s&t2/s&t2.html">Sonic & Tails 2</a> page - some of those enemy names I hesitate to toss around as canon. The manual uses some very peculiar kana combinations, and my translations are halfway to being wild guesses. As usual, the original kana is included on the museum page, so if anyone can come up with some better romanizations, by all means, have at it.
A couple of months ago, Game Pro (which is, against all justice and probability, still in publication) ran a short article on the upcoming 360/PS3 Sonic game. As is to be expected, the article is puerile and contrived and wouldn't be worth mentioning at all except that it confirms the game's director is Shun Nakamura. That is, <i>not</i> Takashi Iizuka, who is presently #1 on my list of "People I Want to Bitch Slap", who has directed every major Sonic game since Sonic Adventure, and who ran out of ideas in 2001. Nakamura's only major credit that I can find is director of Samba de Amigo - which, mind, is a <i>good</i> credit, but that's a very different sort of game. It's hard to speculate at this point just how effective a talent shift will be, and the early crop of screenshots trickling from Sega's PR regions, while they have offered some small relief, have also failed to impress. There is tension in the air.
Sega's updated the <a href="http://sonic.sega.jp/">Sonic Channel</a> website with all the usual schtick. The layout has been improved and the excruciating flash interface has thankfully been dropped. Of particular interest is the character survey, which rounds up 28 of the more prominent cast members and invites readers to select their favorites. The results, the site promises, will be posted on June 23, Sonic's 15th birthday. The poll, unfortunately, is only in Japanese, but here I offer my clumsy 101 C- translations for we happy foreigners who would have our opinions known in this affair:
<b>1)</b> Pick your 3 favorite characters in descending order.
<b>2)</b> This one is either asking which character you like playing as, which character you would like to become, or which character is best in bed. I'm not totally certain.
<b>3)</b> Which character would you like to see more of?
<b>4)</b> If you were going on an adventure, which character would you choose as your partner?
<b>5)</b> Which character would you choose to go on a trip with?
<b>6)</b> Which character would you like to play sports with?
The bottom three questions are just personal information: your prefecture (the bottommost option in the drop-down menu I think says "outside Japan", which is most likely the correct choice if you're reading this), your gender (boy, girl), and your age. The drop-down menus for each of the first 6 questions list the characters in the same order they appear in at the top of the page. For the record, I disavow all responsibility as to the accuracy of the above translations, and if you end up identifying yourself as an 83 year old post-op transsexual from North Korea who would love to co-star with Charmy Bee in a syndicated cooking show, don't blame me.
Reminding the people of Earth once again that I do not play World of Warcraft and never will.
Sonic Riders was released and has promptly joined the recent legion of Sonic games I have thus far been unable to motivate myself to play. If you count Sonic Gems, the total number is now up to 4, or 4½ if you include Advance 3, which I left unfinished. I am now farther behind in my Sonic playing than I ever have been since the inception of the series. However, though I may yet be ignorant to hoverboard-riding bird gangs and flame-wielding lavender cats, I am still quite on top of my hedgehogian lore. All of the museum pages up to Sonic & Tails 2 have been brushed up yet again, and I am, for the moment, satisfied with them. I've added some new info here and there, so if you haven't checked up in a while, it might be worth your time (relatively speaking) to browse through the museum articles through the year 1994. (Special thanks yet again to HarihariSonic of <a href="http://www.clavis.ne.jp/~sonic/segasonic/index.htm">Act Select</a>, whose relentless crusade to educate the masses in the most obscure knowledge of the entire Sonic continuum has allowed me to update the Gameworld and Music Maker pages with the same level of info found elsewhere on the site.)
Actually, in regards to the <a href="/sonic/s&t2/s&t2.html">Sonic & Tails 2</a> page - some of those enemy names I hesitate to toss around as canon. The manual uses some very peculiar kana combinations, and my translations are halfway to being wild guesses. As usual, the original kana is included on the museum page, so if anyone can come up with some better romanizations, by all means, have at it.
A couple of months ago, Game Pro (which is, against all justice and probability, still in publication) ran a short article on the upcoming 360/PS3 Sonic game. As is to be expected, the article is puerile and contrived and wouldn't be worth mentioning at all except that it confirms the game's director is Shun Nakamura. That is, <i>not</i> Takashi Iizuka, who is presently #1 on my list of "People I Want to Bitch Slap", who has directed every major Sonic game since Sonic Adventure, and who ran out of ideas in 2001. Nakamura's only major credit that I can find is director of Samba de Amigo - which, mind, is a <i>good</i> credit, but that's a very different sort of game. It's hard to speculate at this point just how effective a talent shift will be, and the early crop of screenshots trickling from Sega's PR regions, while they have offered some small relief, have also failed to impress. There is tension in the air.
Sega's updated the <a href="http://sonic.sega.jp/">Sonic Channel</a> website with all the usual schtick. The layout has been improved and the excruciating flash interface has thankfully been dropped. Of particular interest is the character survey, which rounds up 28 of the more prominent cast members and invites readers to select their favorites. The results, the site promises, will be posted on June 23, Sonic's 15th birthday. The poll, unfortunately, is only in Japanese, but here I offer my clumsy 101 C- translations for we happy foreigners who would have our opinions known in this affair:
<b>1)</b> Pick your 3 favorite characters in descending order.
<b>2)</b> This one is either asking which character you like playing as, which character you would like to become, or which character is best in bed. I'm not totally certain.
<b>3)</b> Which character would you like to see more of?
<b>4)</b> If you were going on an adventure, which character would you choose as your partner?
<b>5)</b> Which character would you choose to go on a trip with?
<b>6)</b> Which character would you like to play sports with?
The bottom three questions are just personal information: your prefecture (the bottommost option in the drop-down menu I think says "outside Japan", which is most likely the correct choice if you're reading this), your gender (boy, girl), and your age. The drop-down menus for each of the first 6 questions list the characters in the same order they appear in at the top of the page. For the record, I disavow all responsibility as to the accuracy of the above translations, and if you end up identifying yourself as an 83 year old post-op transsexual from North Korea who would love to co-star with Charmy Bee in a syndicated cooking show, don't blame me.
Reminding the people of Earth once again that I do not play World of Warcraft and never will.