UPDATE: New file loaded. Go get it. Update your RSS feeds.

Ok, so here's the deal. Pete's file is somewhat messed up. Now, I can load the Low Quality version for now while I start over from the beginning, or you can wait to hear it in better quality. Those of you who've heard both know that Low Quality sucks -- just warning the rest of you. I'll do that now and update the feed to denote low quality.

In other news:

It still works -- but its days are numbered.

Please? Pete's been promising a prize to someone who writes in the best email about our Strategy vs. Tactics debate, and he promises that it might not be crappy. (Read that promise again carefully.) The address is supposed to be mailbag AT trigames DOT net but the naughtier misspelling of "mailbag" works too.

But no, seriously, I apologize for the lack of an episode last week. My trilobyte, which is now up (point iTunes / Zune / RSS reader of choice to trigames.net/rss.xml), will explain why. Those of you on Facebook can also SEE why if you prod, poke and ponder. In any case, we're recording tomorrow, March 28th, no question. I might be hungover. That's ok.

For anyone asking, Tony is alive and well and kicking and screaming. He left me a voicemail yesterday. He has some personal stuff going on and his computer now has chlamydia but he's not knocked out in the hospital like my paranoid self believed him to be. Dunno when he'll be back on the podcast but as long as he's healthy...

Also if you love Deus Ex like I do you automatically win 5 awesome points. They aren't redeemable for anything but you'll win them anyway.

I'm notoriously bad amongst my podcast cohorts for being one of the worst backlog tacklers in the history of the universe. Where Al is finally clearing stuff -- like Viewtiful Joe 2 (GNC) and Ninja Gaiden (XBOX) -- off his list, and Pete (also of the erstwhile Gameslaves Radio) is always up on the new shipoopie including Noby Noby Boy and Retro Game Challenge, I'm sitting here wondering when the hell I'm going to finish Final Fantasy X. Not having the desire to hook my PS2 up to the hotel televisions during the work week and falling prey to the wiles of simple-to-pick-up DS games doesn't help; Age of Empires Mythologies, why did you steal me away from my backlog!? Dragon Quest IV, why did I beat you even though FFX is clearly better (so far)? And, oh yeah, spending a week to play through and review Suikoden Tierkreis didn't help. Maybe I should tell Gamespot to pay me in extra hours of sleep instead of money. (No I'm kidding Justin, no, I like federally-insurable currency.)

Thanks to the wonders of fake attention deficit disorder, my backlog is going to be threatened again -- this time indirectly by an entry in the Soapbox. Hence, the first edition of F.A.D.D.

One can consider this a special shout out to Gamespot user Aberinkulas, who posted a Soapbox entry about DRM. It's not the actual DRM topic itself that's important, but rather his little mention of one of my most fantabulously favorismal better-than-your-face love-to-death games: Deus Ex (PC). Apparently, he rambled on about it in a previous post. The F.A.D.D. in my head almost made me skip the entire Soapbox post and go straight to his Previous Blog Entries, but I stayed strong.

Up until he started talking about the opening Liberty Island mission.

Which was pretty much how he opened the Deus Ex post. Which... means...

:P ...Okay yeah, I DID skip past his DRM post. (But I went back to it!)

(...about an hour later.)

Now I'm sitting here in my sleepwear (read: basketball shorts and a hoodie), trying to concentrate on my job (working from home on Fridays is the only solace to schlepping out to God-knows-where-out-of-state every frickin' week), but all I can think about is setting up a bunch of proximity mines on the walls right outside of Gunther Hermann's cell during the mission in which I'm supposed to save him -- just to see how fast I'll get cut down. (I don't actually think you can kill him when he's still on your side, but I've never tried extensively.)

What's that? You want me to cap Joseph Manderley in the face right after I debrief with him after the first mission? Did you just say you wanted me to take down Tracer Tong? Wait wait, how awesome would it be if I only paid attention to my swimming skills and swam out as far as I could from Liberty Island? Hold on, there's a voice in my head telling me it'd be hilarious if I took a Dragon's Tooth sword to everyone in the Hong Kong club.

These are the deep thoughts that I think about when thinking about thoughts. Instead of picking up Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin to finish -- wait, Final Fantasy X who? -- I now have the distinct urge to re-install Deus Ex and play that sextacularness over again. This, on a PC that currently runs Crysis like butter. Yes, I'd rather play a DirectX 7 game from almost nine years ago, with horrible physics and a graphically mediocre utilization of the Unreal engine, over everything on my backlog and Crysis. Aberinkulas put it best when he slapped the Deus Ex "motivational" poster on the end of his Deus Ex blog: "Deus Ex. Every time you mention it, SOMEONE will reinstall it."

I must resist.

EVERYBODY DANCE NOW... badda-bup-bup... badda-bup-bup...

OnLive -- the new tech unveiled at GDC that will let you stream games from a server to your cozy house without any bulky console hardware or child-threatening, razor sharp discs -- sounds insanely awesome up front. If what they claim is true -- that there will be minimal lag impacting your gameplay experience -- the technology really could give consoles a run for their money.

Actually, could it? As I read about this thing, with with every point of interest that make me giddy -- the potential to be piracy-proof (or at least as proof as you can get these days); complete abstraction and lowered costs of hardware; parity with in-store release dates (at least for the library on offer) -- there's at least one issue that makes me cast some doubt on OnLive's feasibility at this point in time. I'm not saying that it has no chance -- I just have some reservations, and would like to know more about a few things before we can actually say that consoles as we know them might be in danger.

OnLive sports a minimum requirement of a 1.5 Mbps internet connection for lag-free standard definition gameplay. Now, the only data I could pull up in my hurried Google search was this report that the average broadband speed in the United States sits at 2.3 Mbps as of August of 2008. Then there's this number from 2007 that more than one fifth of the population of both Canada and the United States. So, things aren't too shabby on that end. What I'd like to know, though -- besides what the up-to-date numbers are, of course -- is the breakout of connection speeds among those who play games (casual, hardcore, or otherwise). Do enough gaming folk have (or want and can afford) the necessary 1.5 Mbps connection? How much of that higher end (which brings the average up to 2.3) is for those who run small home businesses and/or have no desire to game? How many of those lacking the necessary connection speeds are those who demand an intense single-player experience? What will the growth of broadband penetration be like by the time the next generation of consoles comes around? Oh -- let's not forget about those Comcast data caps. How will those affect an OnLive subscriber, if at all?

I'm not going to call it on broadband penetration alone. I was one of the doubtful mob members who thought that Microsoft's reliance on broadband (i.e. no POTS modem), and the inability to get Xbox Live running for the first year of the original Xbox's existence, would prove to be that console's undoing. Look where Xbox Live is now. But that's why I also want to know where our culture -- as consumers and gaming aficionados -- stands, and where it will go. I want to know the division in the marketplace between those who still like holding a product in their hands versus those who hate clutter and welcome the 1's and 0's streaming over a network. Gamestop doesn't seem to be doing too shabbily. But then again, Steam doesn't exist on consoles, and the only high-profile, previously retail-only release that's also fully downloadable for consoles -- that I know of -- is Burnout Paradise (whoops, and Warhawk -- thanks confucioussayyo). (I'm sure there are a few others I'm missing.) That GTA IV: The Lost And The Damned DLC is actually available in retail stores as a boxed download code card further makes me wonder just how many people are (and will be) ready to be done with the retail experience for good.

This bit about culture also has to do with how much control we as consumers like to have over our product. A small somewhat-comparable example is the fact that I worry constantly that my Wii will break. Should this happen, I'll lose all access to my downloaded Virtual Console and Wii shop content because of the way they handle online accounts (or lack thereof). I have to go through Nintendo to re-download, whereas Xbox Live lets me re-download games I've wiped off my drive. Now, this isn't to say that OnLive will use the same methodology as Nintendo -- rather, I bring the Wii example up to show how little-to-no user control will hurt. If your internet connection goes kaput, or OnLive's network goes down for maintenance, you can't play anything. At least Steam has Offline Play mode, but even then, you actually have the game code stored on your hard drive. OnLive promises that you won't ever have to be bogged down with that... even if you want to. Y'know, sometimes having a clumsy hard drive is a good thing. So the question here is, how much control is afforded to the user?

All that noted, I'm still excited to see OnLive's working technology in the flesh. I think that the ability to push that amount of processor-intensive data with speeds enough to allow for real-time play can have great implications for eliminating lag in online multiplayer gaming, among other things. Imagine, in the next decade, having a portable gaming device that runs off of evolved OnLive technology -- wirelessly -- without waiting for full downloads or being restricted by hardware. Imagine OnLive becoming gaming platform limited only by the inputs of your currently-available hardware, allowing you to access your subscription from any appropriate device as long as you can log in (remember Microsoft's fabled Live Anywhere? Where'd that go... hmm!).

For now, it's all pie in the sky, and until we can get the answers to some important questions, OnLive's success is anything but guaranteed, or even possible. Maybe "success" to the OnLive team isn't mainstream exposure, but rather enough of a niche market to sustain its supposed low maintenance costs. I just hope it doesn't end up too far ahead of its time. There's too much cool factor in there for OnLive to fail before it's ever given the chance to spread its wings.

UPDATE: User comments have lead to more questions that people want answered.

dan543 and Firehawk998 -- How much will we have to pay?

NightmareCV -- Will it be able to host exclusives?

kenic and Kidvideo90 -- Are there any plans to launch outside North America? Japan has just over 60 Mbps, for instance.

Back on the review track after a few months of absence. Gamespot's Justin Calvert send me Suikoden Tierkreis for review (my first encounter with a review ROM cart! It's got a big hump on the top) and I'm 25 hours in. Hearing that this was supposedly a 30-hour game, I thought that I'd be well done by Wednesday, but man... considering where it looks like I am in the story, it seems as if I've got quite a ways to go.

The game doesn't really make a good first impression -- there's intermittent voice acting, which is cool, but then your main character's voice acting can be putrid at times, and at best is incredibly rushed. I thought at first that maybe they wanted to speak as fast as possible to fit all the voice samples in the DS card, since this isn't a UMD we're talking about here, but some of the better-voiced characters (and thank goodness -- they do exist) speak at a normal pace. The written dialog is also full of fluff -- no, that's too kind; it's full of wasteful, empty words. I know in our own daily conversation we respond to things our friends say with, "Oh really?" and "Hmm, yeah, I think you might be right about that," but there are way too many instances of that here. The fluff extends into your typical chipper, spunky anime stuff too -- "Yeah! Let's get 'em!" "Alright!" Again, there's no issue with it every so often, but all the wasteful text could have been condensed to make for a much tighter script; instead, those who are impatient might just jam crazily on the A button and then accidentally skip over the important stuff.

The battles are okay -- there's nothing much incredibly special about them, though there are special combo attacks depending on who you have in your party. So far they've come in handy, and are very powerful -- but I haven't been able to use them too much because for much of the game I've been forced to use some characters based on the storyline who don't work with the others for combo attacks. There's no real penalty for using them but you basically sacrifice multiple party members' turns for a single attack, so it's not like abusing them is a real problem. At least, I don't think so. Also, non-boss battles can go by really fast -- which is completely awesome, considering how it's turn-based and old-school. It follows that ol' Suikoden motif of multiple characters carrying out their moves at the same time. For instance, two guys from your party will simultaneously attack their targets (whether you chose the same target or different targets for them) -- even as the enemy is attacking one of your other guys. In addition to speeding up the battles, it just looks cool. So even if the turn-based battles aren't anything special, they're entertaining and over quickly. It's just a shame that they didn't put one-on-one and massive battles in when they could have tried to spice things up.

I'm really, really liking (most of) the presentation. At worst, the music is decent; at best, it's really well-done. Many tracks are done with MIDI instruments, which still sound very nice, but there are a few recorded tracks (or at least they sound recorded) that sound absolutely exquisite. (I'm reminded of some of the best Baten Kaitos tracks -- the very unique, very beautiful ones.) Some of the environments rule too. The game's got colorful, detailed structures with pockets of light and shadows that reflect appropriately on your polygonal characters. I've encountered some boring dungeon designs (both structurally and graphically) which stick out especially because of the other, better-looking environments, which is sad, but the good definitely outweighs the bad. I'll say this much about the in-battle character models, though: They look mad creepy. Imagine the super-deformed Crystal Chronicles characters, except they look less cutey-cartooney and more... realistic. More realistic, except with beady, slightly large eyes. That always seem to be looking at me. Ugh -- I'm getting the chills. Anyway, yeah -- creepy.

Earlier on I thought I had this game pegged -- but the story, however poorly its dialog can be written at times, started getting intriguing about 15 hours ago. (And I'm not even a story guy.) I guess Suikoden fanatics might be disappointed that this is essentially a new storyline -- no major story elements from the previous games appear here. But collecting all the characters to band together is always cool (and yes, there are 108 of them here too), with the two caveats that (1) not all of them are interesting from a character-development perspective and (b) a lot of them are interchangeable in battle.

As always, it's too early to call it -- but my opinion has gone from "meh" to "cool" in the past three days. I'm genuinely looking favorably towards experiencing the rest of it.

Yesterday, I posted a snide little editorial concerning Arte Piazza's handling of the Dragon Quest IV: Chapters Of The Chosen remake for the Nintendo DS. At the time, I was about 31 hours into the game, and right at the final boss of the main content (this remake includes additional content after the game's conclusion, which I believe was also the case in the PSone remake from years ago). To be fair, the letter was a result of my attempts to beat the last boss -- dude went through like, a million transformations, and by the time he finally killed me, I was a little exasperated. So I was grinding and grinding for levels, and at a certain point on Sunday evening I had just about had it. What better way to vent out my frustrations than to put finger to keyboard and type out an overreaction?

In truth, I do enjoy the game. At least, now I do. I completed the main content yesterday and am going to go about finishing the epilogue before Thursday. For anyone who's been listening to the podcasts, or picking up my dropped hints from previous blogs, I took slight issue with its old-school tenets -- the most frustrating ones being the need to grind and the overly simple battle system. Fortunately, the better spells -- the types of spells that give plain-jane RPG battles in general that slight, extra tactical feel -- become unlocked as long as you persist with the grinding. It still wasn't all roses, but I fully recognized that -- as someone who's traditionally enjoyed old-school jRPG'ing -- my issues were simply a result of (a) me wanting to finish the game ASAP so I could play more titles and (2) my ever-dwindling free time. (Hence why I haven't posted a blog in 93 years.)

However, the issues I cited in the "letter" are ones I believe should be rectified for any old-school remake or any original game created with old-school philosophy in mind. The touch-screen quibbles would probably only be applied to games where action is almost non-existent -- you know, menu-based role-playing games and point-and-click adventure titles -- but a few of the other interface concerns apply everywhere. The letter wasn't actually an affront to DQIV; I just targeted DQIV because I happen to be playing it currently, and it's a prime example of some of the small things that should be tweaked for the better. Ameotoko pretty much summed it up when he commented, "I think there needs to be some kind of line drawn for all these remakes. Sure, nostalgia is a huge selling factor here, but developers really need to sit down and think of what really needs to change with the times." This is the crux of two big things, of which DQIV is an example and of which my letter snarkily complains about, that I think are important to consider when doing an old-school remake / reissue or something new with old-school trappings.

The Touch Screen Thang

What's funny about Dragon Quest IV is that the in-battle menu commands (Attack, Item, Magic, etc) are all laid out in these huge boxes on the bottom screen. The enemies, too, are drawn as big, beautiful (not to mention well-animated) sprites. The same applies for the world map sub-menu and your characters' inventories. Your characters' spell menus aren't broken out in the same way, but the text for each spell is spread out so far apart that the designers really could have separated them into big boxes as well, with no detriment to screen layout. This all comes together to give you the impression that, yes, you could probably touch these menu items if you wanted to.

Perhaps this was an overreaction, but I was almost agape when I touched the screen and found out that this did nothing at all. Now, for many, touch-screen gaming isn't ideal. People are used to pressing buttons. Hell, I'm used to pressing buttons. In addition, forcing stupid touch-screen gameplay into a game that doesn't need it is, well, just that: stupid. However, when you come across a game such as Dragon Quest IV, where adding in the option to use the touch screen for simple commands really wouldn't take anything away from the rest of the experience, it's a no-brainer: include the touch screen.

Let's look at the Ace Attorney series. The game could easily be played with the d-pad and buttons. In fact, save for Apollo Justice, all of these games originated on the Gameboy Advance -- a portable sans touch-screen. Yet, including the touch-screen controls resulted in more options for how the player wanted to play the game. Sometimes, you're sitting at a table and you just want to lean your head in your off hand while you eat (given that you don't have to use a knife), read, and -- yes -- play a videogame. Or, you're lying in bed and it's more comfortable for your palms to cradle the DS in one hand and tap the screen with the other (instead of holding it the traditional way; try it some time). Or, you're just one of those people whose hands cramp up if you hold a portable system the same way for too long, and you wish you could change up your hand position every so often without sacrificing the ability to play the game.

All of the above scenarios apply to me, at least, and the Ace Attorney games lent themselves to my quirks. I shouldn't even call them quirks -- I highly doubt I'm the only one who would enjoy being able to lazily play using only one hand at the table, or whose hand muscles start to tire from holding the DS for extended periods of time, or whatnot.

Then we get to the whole drag-and-drop thing. Again, what or how does it hurt to have such an option? In a role-playing game, where you'll inevitably be stuck managing inventory between characters and sorting items of any nature, such a feature -- where it makes sense, of course -- would be a boon for tired thumbs. But hey -- even if you implement a drag-and-drop where it doesn't make sense -- what or how does it hurt? We're not talking about taking away the button inputs, after all.

Final Fantasy IV for DS is a different beast, but some of the things mentioned here still apply. In general, the battles are much faster -- it's based on the first Final Fantasy to use the Active Time Battle system. That is, unless you set the game options to "wait", enemies will attack you no matter how long you take to decide on which attack or spell you wish to execute. Speed to action is much more important here than it would be in DQIV, but Square made a boo-boo here in making the menu items a bit too small for touch-screen gameplay anyway. You can use the touch screen but it's difficult; Square should have included a touch-screen size option to balloon each menu item so that people who wanted to could learn how to navigate the menus just as quickly as they could with the buttons. Even still, you can at least use the stylus to navigate the map if you want, and it works just fine here. During exploration, I could cradle the DS in my palm and tell my party where to go with my index finger. This allowed me to stave off "Space Invaders Thumb" (if you don't watch the Simpsons, that may be lost on you) for just a little while longer.

(This same argument, by the way, also goes for cross-platform ports that refuse to acknowledge platforms' input methods. If you port something to the Wii, you should allow players to use the Wii remote to point and choose menu items. If you port something to the PC, for the love of god, let me use the keyboard to enter my character name instead of using the arrow keys to highlight letters -- Turok 2, I'm looking at you.)

The point is this: The technology exists, and there are at least some places where its implementation makes sense. Let's put it to good use.

True to Old School Interfaces

There's debate out there with regards to whether or not "old school" and "nostalgia" are simply euphemisms for "archaic" and "outdated." Usually this applies to gameplay content: To level-grind, or not to level-grind? Why can't Mega Man shoot at the ceiling? Why does this RPG's battle system have no gimmicks? Lives and continues instead of a save file? So on, so forth, et cetera, yadda. That's certainly a worthy discussion, but the resolution isn't so clear-cut. Sure, I'm willing to give old-school gameplay tenets a pass, probably because I started with Mario Brothers instead of Mario 64.

It's in interface design and usability, though, where I think "old school / nostalgia" should not apply. This is not where "stylistic" choices should be made; making sure you can get to what you need to get to in order to make the content work is a far more objective, right-wrong type of deal.

For example, ShenlongBo, in his glorious return to mingle with us Earthlings, brought up Street Fighter IV as another example of not getting with the times. This makes me recall David Sirlin's editorial on the things that are wrong with SFIV. Specifically, that button config screen sounds like a complete miss on Capcom's part. If you remember nearly every Street Fighter game starting with Street Fighter II for the Super NES, you can reconfig your buttons in a split second just by tapping. This is because the six attacks are laid out: Jab, Strong Fierce, Short, Forward, Roundhouse. When you're at Jab, all you do is simply press the button that you want to apply to the Jab attack. The cursor then automatically moves to the next slot. If you were playing hot-potato versus matches with a bunch of friends (i.e. the loser passes off the controller to the next friend), and someone passed you the SNES pad with a messed up config, you could change it to the default easily: Start and Select to get to the button config, then YXLBAR. Done. In SFIV, apparently you have to go to each command and scroll through what you want the buttons to do -- instead of simply tapping. Small thing? Maybe, but it's still an example of how to do things correctly for efficient usability's sake.

Back to DQIV. Yep -- I'm talking about the priest and the experience points. I count this as interface, as much as you might want to argue against it, because for me this is the dissemination of simple, yet pertinent, information as opposed to being a stylistic choice. In most RPGs, or at least, in any RPG I've personally played -- Japanese, Western, turn-based, real-time, what have you -- there is always a very quick, accessible way to find out how much experience you need to earn in order to level up. Diablo II and Titan Quest have the Experience Bar, which fills up as you down monsters. When it's full, you earn a level. Simple. Final Fantasy requires a trip to the sub-menu to access the character sheet you want to get to, but again, it's simple: CURRENT EXP / NEXT LEVEL shows you numerically, right there, how far you are from hitting the next level. In both cases, you're able to tell how much you need to earn right from where you're standing. As interface designs have improved, later Final Fantasy games have let you simply hit a right or left shoulder button to switch to the next character sheet (i.e. no need to cancel out of one character sheet to navigate to another).

In DQIV, and I imagine in all of its predecessors, you must travel to a town, find a priest, and ask for Divination. The priest will then tell you how much experience every single person in your party needs to get to the next level in a scrolling dialog box.

"Chupon, my child, you require 2397 experience points to get to the next level."

*press A*

"Alena, my child, you require 10402 experience points to get to the next level."

*press A*

"Ragnar, my child, you require 5838 experience points to get to the next level."

*press A*

"Meena, my child, you require 1003 experience points to get to the next level."

You get the picture. This goes on for everyone in your wagon (i.e. in your party but not active in the map or battle fields). A task that would normally take a second or two now takes the time you need to first warp to town, then find the church, then listen to the priest as he blesses you and asks you what you need, then scroll through the text. I'm one of those guys who, while level-grinding, likes to check his EXP FOR NEXT numbers every five or so battles, and this priest business is incredibly frustrating for me. It's a simple piece of information. It's not as if I'm asking for Save-Anywhere, which some people cling to as a challenge enhancer (I'll be willing to concede that). No -- it's simple information that has no impact on how easy or difficult the game content is. What's next -- having to travel to an inn to find out how many hit points my characters have remaining, or traveling to a bank to see how much money my party is currently holding?

But The World Refused To Change...

Ameotoko: ""Dragon Quest games could've benefited ALOT from dragging/dropping items like you said: I'm playing V now and absolutely loath transferring items, and, being new to the series, immensely dislike going to a priest just to see my exp for the next level."

To be fair, Dragon Quest V came out before my pretty little letter will ever reach Arte Piazza's offices. Naturally, I'm not actually intending to send it, at least not in such a rude format. If my instincts serve me correctly, however, Dragon Quest VI for the Nintendo DS will follow suit. Developer sometimes just do things because "that's the way we do it." Does that make Dragon Quest IV (or V for that matter) a "bad game"? Absolutely not. There are enough merits to the game that outweigh whatever interface issues I may have with it. The touch screen "issues" aren't even that -- it's truly my personal frustration that the developers chose not, or forgot, to put the touch screen to use where they could have. It's certainly not necessary, but it would make for a much smoother experience for some players, enough so that it could count as interface design. Again: It's there. Where it makes sense, use it.

This whole thing recalls multiple discussions I listened to that happened on the 1up Yours podcast, back when it was still called 1up Yours. The subject of the discussions was Metal Gear Solid, and how the crab-claw controller scheme was a pain in the butt to learn. One of the Metal Gear Solid defenders said something along the lines of, "Well, that's Metal Gear." As times advance, as you grow older, and as your schedules and patience start to disintegrate almost as quickly as your hairline, "that's how it is" just won't cut it anymore. Perhaps it's time to start calling out these issues more than we have been. Because for everyone who says, "I didn't notice the issues because I was too engrossed in the experience," there's another person who will say, "I didn't notice the experience because I was struggling with these interface issues / my hands were cramped."

Let's advance to a place where no one will ever have to say the latter ever again.

Dear old-school RPG developers making games for the Nintendo DS, specifically those responsible for Dragon Quest IV: Chapters Of The Chosen... er...

Ok, let me start again.

Dear Arte Piazza, the studio which developed Dragon Quest IV: Chapters Of The Chosen for the Nintendo DS:

Hi! You may have noticed that the Nintendo DS has a touch screen. This little technical marvel allows players to tap directly at menu choices and commands to execute them, as an alternative to navigating a cursor via a varied amount of d-pad taps and a confirmation button press.

What does this mean? Well, what might normally take six d-pad taps and three button presses would require just three taps. What might normally require a full second would require half of that. Now, these numbers might sound a little nitpicky and insignificant, but you may have *also* noticed that your game requires a lot of grinding for levels. When you spend hours upon hours in battle menu screens that require nothing more than d-pad taps and button presses, not to mention the hours you'll spend managing your inventory which also leave you in menu screens that require nothing more than d-pad taps and button presses, maybe -- just maybe -- those potential half-seconds saved add up, hmm?

The game you've developed also gives each character his or her own item bag in addition to the communal item bag. As such, you've allowed characters to swap items. Have you ever heard of "drag and drop"? It's this amazing new feature invented when the first graphical user interface surfaced in personal computing about, oh, I'd say well over two decades ago. You select an item... drag it over to where you want it to go... and then unselect it! With a touch-screen interface, swapping items between characters in Dragon Quest IV: Chapters Of The Untouchable becomes a piece of cake instead of managing Chernobyl! Fancy that.

The fact that you've represented menu commands such as Fight, Item, and Line-Up in these very large outlined boxes is a great start in creating an interface that one can operate by using even the meatiest of index fingers. Now, the next step is -- wait for it -- actually implementing the touch part. If you're going to port a game that can legitimately be played ENTIRELY with finger or stylus taps without missing a beat to a platform that has a touch screen for finger and stylus taps, it probably makes sense to allow your audience to use that technology. But then, I'm no game designer, hahaha!

While we're here, let me make two more observations.

1) Every time a character levels up, the game scrolls through each individual's attribute upgrades and spells learnt -- consecutively, I might add -- via the same tiny text box you use for in-game battle narration. You may have noticed that the DS has not one, but TWO full screens with which you could have displayed all of that information simultaneously. Wow! The things that the 21st century has to offer!

2) I think it's charming, in an old-school "You'll do things the way we tell you to" way, that you force your players to find a priest in order to see how many experience points each character needs to level up. I think it's even more charming that this information is delivered sequentially, one character after another, in a scrolling text box. Finally, it's ever so loyal of you to stick to Dragon Quest's roots with this method of info gathering. But for the idiots and lazy people out there -- you know, like me -- maybe you could do us a favor and let us see this information laid out in each character's attributes page. Because, you know, us stupid ones only really want to see info for one or two characters once in awhile. And, ya know, sometimes that priest is too far away. (Also, some of us are atheists.)

Thanks a ton -- kisses!

MrC

P.S. - This letter will arrive too late for you to actually think about these thangs for Dragon Quest V for the DS, but do think about it for Dragon Quest VI. Or, you know, any other old-school RPG you decide to port to a modern-day, touch-screen enabled platform.

P.P.S. - I like your game. But next time, please don't make it so hard to like.

Before I put up the blurb, I'd like to answer edu's DQV question from my previous blog. After having read some reviews on the game, I can definitely say that I am looking forward to buying DQV -- even with my DQIV fatigue. My main problem is that the battle system never seems to offer any hook other than attack, attack, heal, buff, rinse, lather, repeat. From what I've read, at least DQV affords you a full-blown monster partner system that's way more advanced than the random NPC comrades you encounter in DQIV. So while before I would have just bought it to experience a game that never came Stateside, boring battle sytem be damned, I'm now actually looking forward to enjoying its improvements over its predecessor.

On to the blurb and pimpage. Also, thanks to aspro73 for your Dissidia Potion entry! It was great. Everyone, the deadline is February 28th, 2009 at Noon.

===Episode 122: Trilobyte===

Austin and Al discuss their discussion-worthy Trilobyte topics, and receive a pleasant surprise in the mailbag when listener Aspro73 leaves the first Dissidia Potion contest entry. With Pete absent this episode, you can find his musings in ihs Trilobyte mini-episode that went live on Friday, February 13th, 2009. And don't forget -- if you want to win the Final Fantasy Dissidia potion, you'd best submit your essay (of 500 words maximum) about the Dissidia potion. It could be a tale about a Dissidia potion. Or, it could be a story in which the Dissidia potion is sentient and the main character -- whatever. It just has to be about the Dissidia potion!

Download here.
File size: 60.98MB
Running time: 1:24:40

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Pete's Trilobyte messed up, so if you downloaded the Trilobyte for 2-13-2009 and heard Al's voice again instead of Pete's, go into your ZunePodcasts directory and delete the episode manually. Then you should be able to re-download the proper MP3. I'm not sure if the same method works for iTunes, but it should.

I'm starting to get DQIV fatigue. I mention as much on my Trilobyte and on the upcoming full episode of the podcast, but I'm a little sad that this is happening. It means that I'm losing my appreciation for old-school stuff. Then again, it does speak to a question that supersonic97 posed to us with regards to something being "nostalgic" versus just plain old. Or at least, that's what we interpreted from his question.

Update with the Dissidia Potion contest: we're setting a hard deadline for the end of February, which happens to fall on a Saturday. Regardless of whether or not we podcast, we're just going to set it there and then read your entries, individually if we have to, then conference via email or the cast. So again: If you want to win a Final Fantasy Dissidia Potion, write in a short story or essay -- max 500 words -- about the Dissidia Potion. It can be a story revolving around the potion, or it can cast the potion as a character in and of itself, or whatever -- but it has to be about, in some way, shape or form, the Dissidia Potion.

I'm guessing soon I'll be having another Win My Game contest, too. Look out for that.