This guy is one of the best LP'ers I've seen. Even though he only has Let's Plays of the first 3 Sonic games, I was hooked on his Sonic 2 LP. He gives great commentary on all the stages, including the game's secrets, his remarks and early Sonic doll skits are witty, and his presentation is top-notch for an LP video. I highly recommend him especially if you played Sonic games at some point.

Dang, I love the Internet. What better place to gain popularity by posting angry blogs that stir up emotions, yet completely fall apart when exposed to logic? "Logic is for p******" (Angry Video Game Nerd quote, for the record)

Here we have a stellar example of such a blog post on GS's soapbox today in a complaint about the Wii. Since I know that my post is inevitably going to be downrated and thus ignored due to the utterly stupid comment rating system GS has implemented, I'll post my rebuttal to that blog and the subsequent comments here:

"Remember the Dreamcast? The console that the hardcore gamers loved but the casuals passed over in favour of the PS2? Yeah, a load of good targeting core gamers did Sega. Remember the Gamecube? The console that was more powerful than the PS2 yet still ended up being a target of derision? Obviously Nintendo realized they couldn't win by targeting the fickle so-called "hardcore" gamers.

Heck, this blog is perfect proof. People have been clamouring for a Mario Galaxy sequel, another Metroid game, and a "true" Zelda Wii game constantly and then when they finally announce it? All people do is b**** about them. Yeah, "true" Nintendo fans indeed. There's no such thing as a true fan.

And seriously, Shigesato Itoi has stated that he has no intentions of making a Mother 4. Breath of Fire was developed by Capcom and Eternal Darkness was developed by Silicon Knights, so obviously Nintendo isn't responsible for those franchises. Skies of Arcadia is a Dreamcast port developed by Overworks and published by Sega. Bomberman? Have you heard of Bomberman Blast for WiiWare? A console Pokemon RPG? Yes, because those have been well-received by gamers in general. And heck, they gave us a new Punch-Out!! game and you lot are still unsatisfied.

Finally, no one makes you play shovelware but yourself. If you insist on focussing on that rather than good games such as Zack and Wiki and Little King's Story, that's your problem. Where were you "hardcore" gamers when those came out?"

I would have written more but the 1500 character limit prevented me from going further. Mind you, I do agree with the general sentiment that Nintendo has been getting lax this year, and the GS Wii boards tend not to dispute that, but I really get annoyed at how those so-called "true" Nintendo fans constantly whine about everything.

And drat, I forgot to mention Sin And Punishment 2 somewhere.

...but based on the fact we are supposed to find the greatest game hero, the whole Bub and Bob ordeal is hideous.

Okay, yes, I know that many regard this as yet another stupid useless popularity contest with an obvious result. In regards to the former, why don't you simply not vote then and get on with your life? Concerning the latter, there's an option to vote for the other guy. The advantage Kratos has over Cloud in the matchup as of this writing shows it can happen without shady business going on.

Anyways, in regards to Bub and Bob, how many of you lot are voting for them out of sincerity as opposed to because a meme said so? Based on the overblown hyperbolic statements, not many it seems. You know, in the end, this hurts Bub and Bob and supporters more than it actually helps. For one thing, the meme voters are overshadowing the people who sincerely like the dinos, so that even they are being accused of being mindless drones despite not actually being such. For another, people who haven't jumped on the bandwagon are not going to greet Bub and Bob with cheers and open arms. In reality, their impression of them has become tainted by the contest and all the obnoxious "supporters". Considering that the franchise has been going downhill recently, they don't deserve that. They are not L-block. Bubble Bobble is merely one part of the retro gaming scene, while Tetris in casual circles has influence comparable to, maybe even surpassing Mario.

In addition, this is Gamespot, and we are Gamespot users. Why are so many of us openly letting some other community pull the strings on our contest? And of course, we all know that the reputation of this site will suffer if Bub and Bob win. Okay, so many of us are not exactly liking how this site has been handled recently, but still, we are members of this site, so it reflects badly on us if dirt is piled on the site's reputation, especially if we are the ones doing it.

So yeah, that's my view on the whole fiasco. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to observe the unfolding of the Gordon Freeman vs Solid Snake matchup.

A strange reaction comes out of me whenever I hear people talk about "The Greatest Game of All Time". Wait, you mean that every game in the future will be inferior to the game you deemed "Greatest Game of All Time"? That gaming will never again progress in terms of experience?

I find it difficult for me to answer the question of what is my favourite anything, especially in terms of works such as video games. I feel that by putting one thing on a higher pedestal than others, I am implicitly denying the individual qualities that other things have that the thing on the pedestal either doesn't have or has less of. It's even worse when you get a bunch of people to determine a favourite, since there will never be a guaranteed consensus on which will be number one due to personal tastes varying. In fact, many people, including myself, tend to get annoyed at whatever ends up on the number one spot, as then it feels like the person (or worse, group of people) is trying to force that thing as if it was a "one size fits all" thing. This mentality is why I found Roger Ebert's assertion that all greatest movie lists are propaganda to be incredibly true and that the least interesting ones are based on large-scale voting.

In short, this is why I am reluctant to post on any of the many "Favourite Wii game" boards.

I know this might be a bit late, but I only recently found out that this Mario Kart Wiitournament was still running and ends on June 24. For the unitiated, you have toknocka triple succession of two Spiked Topmen out of the arena only receiving Triple Mushroom items to aid you. After every 30 seconds or so, another of the three outer rings of the colosseum falls away.

So far, playing through the Spiked Topman challenge is quite exhilarating. It reminds me of Time Trials in the sense of requiring pattern memorization skills combined with quick reflexes to get the best time, not to mention the endless string of failures before a success, yet it's refreshing to seea new strategy to masterand pull out a vehicle I would not have otherwise used in a regular race. I would start off with a plan of attack after figuring out the Topmen's movement pattern, then discover as I repeatedly put it into action a better way of doing things and thus adapt it to my overall strategy. Yes, I could simply study the YouTube videos of it, but I find it more fun to figure things out yourself. I'm not in it to win since I'm nowhere near as skilled as even many GameFAQs denizens, but to do my best and see how far I can go. I'm currently at the 49 second range, which is pretty lousy if you compare it to the 18.8 seconds (give or take) of the world record, but it's still an A rank apparently so it's satisfaction enough.

It's a pity though that this is a limited time event. I'm suspecting that Nintendo prefers to attempt to even out the amount of practice time the competitors have, but it's still disappointing that suchchallenges can only be experienced once a year and that if you hear about it too late you've missed out indefinitely or even forever. I would love to leisurely try this on my own time tohone my skillsrather than stress about time limits, so it's too bad things like this have to be reserved for special events rather than be included in the game itself. Oh well. I anticipate seeing what they have next year.

UPDATE: In the end, I got 23.832 seconds. Not a bad time, I think. The world record is currently a little above 18.6 seconds.

6. For being fair with modding, only locking and creating officialdiscussion threadswhen absolutely necessary.

5. For being a good discussion contributor, along with JordanElek.

4. For showing us we don't have to give up our childish inhibitions to be mature.

3. For helping foster good spirit on the Wii boards.

2. For owning Matt Casamassina.

And most of all:

1. For putting up with us rowdy nerds.

Thanks for being one of the best mods on any forum I've been to on the Internet. Keep up the awesome!

As gamers know, many of the most prominent franchises are Japanese in origin. As anyone familiar with localized Japanese media knows, often the translators will not get things completely right due to differences between the Japanese language and English language. As the title suggests, this blog is going to look into the phenomenon known as "Engrish" and how select video game character names are affected. Mind you, I'm not attempting to be one of those otaku purists that hate every single minor detail changed from the original Japanese version, because in all honesty, some Japanese video game character names would be pretty bad kept in the localization (seriously, "Mash" of Final Fantasy VI? "Refill" of Tales of Symphonia?). Nonetheless, as a video game nerd, it's my self-imposed duty to report Japanese/English name translations that no normal person would really care about anyways.

1. Rydia (Final Fantasy IV)

Aah, the classic Engrish name of antiquity, and I mean antiquity in more ways than one. It's fairly obvious that it's supposed to translate into Lydia, in reference to, you know, the country of old. Somehow, the Engrish stuck, though. Why they kept this name while restoring Lenna from Reina (FFV), the latter which actually sounds like a name one would use in the Western world, is beyond me. Maybe people were just used to the Final Fantasy series and its sometimes bizarre character names, even in the original Japanese. Of course, in this particular entry, Cecil and Rosa, and Gilbert/Edward sounded relatively normal for Western audiences. I don't know. Maybe it's just tradition as much as "You spoony bard!" After all, not as many people have fond nostalgic memories of Final Fantasy V. And yes, Final Fantasy IV also has Kain/Cain, but that's better explained by the fact that the religious reference was unacceptable back in the SNES days to Nintendo of America.

For the record, I'm merely scratching the surface of localized names for Final Fantasy. There's a heck of a lot more weird translations of character names in the series, and listing them would make this blog ridiculously long. The site http://www.ffcompendium.com/h/nchara.shtml has a long reference of character name meanings for those who have just as high nerd curiosity as I do, and yes, there's many more Engrish names and other such mistranslations/questionable translations to come for the series.

2. Porygon (Pokemon)

Okay, this one is not bad. Actually, it's good. In fact, it happens to be one of the rare instances where keeping the Engrish actually makes sense (whether Engrish in general is good is up to subjective opinion). I mean, would you really want to say, "Go, Polygon!" in a Pokemon battle? It'd sound incredibly dorky to command Polygon-Z to use its KamehameHyper Beam (okay, throwing in a Dragon Ball Z reference along with the Pokemon Porygon-Z is dorky enough, but you get the picture, right? Right?). Yes, this comes from the same translators who thought up Seel and Muk, but English Pokemon names aren't really that much more hit-and-miss than their Japanese counterparts, with names like Gallop and Beequeen. The latter did give us the unintentionally funny Mukubird, for all its worth though (of course changed to the more generic Staravia for the localization).

3. Mayl (Mega Man Battle Network)

The original Japanese name was Meiru. This is pretty much a direct phonetic translation, for all my knowledge of said phonetics knows (which technically makes it not Engrish, but the idea is similar). But seriously, look at it. It's as weird as sticking a consonant in front of a common name; wait, it is. And how are you supposed to pronounce it? I don't know, I'd suspect at first glance it would sound like the first syllable of maelstrom. But that doesn't sound like the pronunciation for Meiru! The localized version of the anime adaption at least changed it to Maylu, which, while still a name you'd be very hard-pressed to find in a phonebook, at least sounds serviceable considering how often "Lou" appears as a middle name (Mary Lou, Cindy Lou, you get the picture). Speaking of which, this is probably a good time to go jam with the greatest video game Lou. You know, the Devil from Guitar Hero III.

4. Raguna (Rune Factory)

At first, I was going to pass this off as another Engrish name along the lines of Rydia. I mean, Final Fantasy VIII got it right with Laguna, and that's coming from the same game that misspelled Diabolos and Megiddo. However, checking the Final Fantasy Name origin site I referenced earlier, it's actually a little more complicated than that. Apparently, the name is derived from Ragnarok, pronounced La-gu-na-ro-ku in Japanese. Not to say that the Final Fantasy creators were wrong; after all, the other source of the name, according to Loire, er, lore was Laguna Beach. Taken in the context of Ragnarok, Raguna doesn't actually sound all that awkward. Still, they could have at least taken out the u to make it more obvious, because now it just looks like some awkward compromise between that and Laguna. Eh, I guess that RPG fans are just more forgiving considering the bizarre names that show up in the genre, localized or otherwise. Interesting how the names I listed have origins from the RPG genre in common.

For the record, while the Wii board was exploding in Madworld...madness, I didn't get involved in it, as the game was not my type, so to say. Rune Factory Frontier was the game I was quietly hyping instead. It looks to be an interesting, involving game, and it's relatively peaceful.

Dearest, everyone seems so angry on the Wii boards lately. First there was that whole ordeal over Matt Casamassina of IGN that started with the Sonic and the Black Knight review. Yes, admittedly it's justified this time, what with his blatant ignorance and bias, but did it have to carry on for 10 pages into the Madworld review topic? And now the board is cluttered with topics either condemning or praising the new Resident Evil game.

Sorry, folks, but this is my cue to silently slink away from the drama and quietly hype some of the lesser-talked-about games that are coming out.

Ever since hearing the Super Smash Bros Melee version of Pollyanna from Mother, the song still being my favourite to this day, I've been an avid fan of video game music. Yeah, gamers already know video game music rocks. However, beyond the Koji Kondo and Nobuo Uematsu works, there are many that tend to fall under the radar and don't get the credit that they deserve. Hence, I will attempt to help shed some light on these hidden jewels.

Around December, I picked up a copy of Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz from the local bargain bin. Having read previews and reviews of the game, I expected a very challenging game with controls that seem to be good or bad depending on how good one is at hand-eye coordination. It turned out to be quite fast and fun, and I quite enjoyed it. However, one thing I wasn't expecting was the music. Since everyone seems to remember Monkey Ball for fast gameplay and endless fallouts, I expected a generic sound sample. It was a pleasant surprise, then, to experience the highly upbeat and addicting soundtrack. The levels just felt more entertaining, from the frenzied Monkey Island to the atmospheric Pirates' Ocean, and it was great motivation to keep continuing on despite multiple failures. Witness the ear candy here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EUoafrse8Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbXMLJRlwY8&feature=related

Suddenly this site's Wii board doesn't look quite as bad.

I've seen people do, to put it very mildy, pretty strange things on the Internet, from a Global Boycott to bring a character back to a children's television show to hacking into a game to make it more like a previous installment. Media haters are a pretty dang vocal lot, like they can't stand the thought of anyone actually liking said media. This is probably the most bloody insane thing I've ever seen though.

http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/19099.page

Yeah, the user wants to file a complaint against a company over a game he doesn't like. So what? People sue over every little inconvenience, and heck, a person actually being successful at suing McDonalds over spilled hot coffee makes you seriously wonder "What were they thinking?!" I was amazed, though, at how much research he actually put into this. If you've been on the official Spore boards, it seems like half the people on there exist solely to whine about the game (so what else is new?) and you constantly get comments like "Don't trust the reviewers, this game sucks because we say so!" I didn't expect the hatred to go this far, though. The person is acting like Spore is Big Rigs or something, and that kind of devotion to such a fanatical plan against it would be insane even for that game. Lesson learned: the Internet makes you megalomaniacal. Too bad I had to have that lesson drilled into my head the hard way more times than I can count.

On a more constructive note, I present my Spore page and some of my better creations:

http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=usr-PsychoSynthesis|500215187957

For spacefaring creatures:

http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=usr-PsychoSynthesis%7C500215187957%3Asast-500215188388%3Apg-40

http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=usr-PsychoSynthesis%7C500215187957%3Asast-500251514736

For spaceships:

http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=usr-PsychoSynthesis%7C500215187957%3Asast-500215204789%3Apg-40
http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=usr-PsychoSynthesis%7C500215187957%3Asast-500251110101

For buildings:
http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=usr-PsychoSynthesis%7C500215187957%3Asast-500215903513%3Apg-40
http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=usr-PsychoSynthesis%7C500215187957%3Asast-500216524287%3Apg-20
http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=usr-PsychoSynthesis%7C500215187957%3Asast-500216461433%3Apg-20
http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=usr-PsychoSynthesis%7C500215187957%3Asast-500257222369
http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=sast-500258452981
http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=usr-PsychoSynthesis%7C500215187957%3Asast-500258468335