Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan

Some 6 years ago I was in Japan, marvelling at a world where I definitely didn't belong. When the time came to return to the hotel for the second or third shower of the day (you've never experienced summer until you experience a tropical summer) I'd lie in bed with my jaw slacked in awe, eyes gaping at the television screen. It was a parade of odities: weird gameshows, lots of people getting wet and to this day I wish western TV was more like that.

This one commercial caught my eye.

'I must have this!' I yelled, as I shook my boyfriend at the time by the collars. I don't much remember what happened during the next chunk of the trip right until the moment when we found ourselves in Akihabara mimicing and gesturing to people so they would point us in the direction of this my Holy Grail.

It was the early days of the Nintendo DS and I was yet to see any game that really... reeled me in. But I saw in this the potential for greatness, the addictiveness that would follow. Japan was personified in this game and, so help me God, I wasn't leaving Japan without it!

We finally found it and the game was everything I was hoping for and more. Sure, I had no idea what it was spewing out at me but the beauty of it is, I didn't need to. I knew how to recognise the words "YES" and "NO" so I knew enough to press retry when I lost a level.

And what magnificent levels! I spent around two or three years completely finishing this game and its sequel: Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii (or Osu 2 as I always called it). The sequel is the same game with different songs and that is more than enough for me.

Unfortunately the trend stuck and they were quick to create a version for us Western folk and thus was born Elite Beat Agents. I'm not a big fan of this third installment of the series. It's a bit cheesy. Sure it had more songs, most of them i knew, some of them I wish I never had. But it didn't hold a candle to the previous ones. Playing with disco MIB just doesn't do it for me.

Every now and then you'll see me going back to these two games I worked so hard for; these two games that cost me the screen of two NDSs and about 3 styluseseses. Totally worth it.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

The Phoenix Wright series is, as the name hints, about an attorney at law. You play the part of Phoenix himself and you accompany him from his first case as a defense attorney. The premise of every case is always that your client is innocent. From here you get to investigate crime scenes, present items to witnesses and police detectives to try and gather information to build your case.

The judicial system in the series is singular. Every trial must be wrapped up in three days from its beggining and only the prosecution can call forth any witnesses. Which means only you, as the defense, get to cross-examine witnesses. Most often than not one of the witnesses themselves is the killer (yes, you only deal in murder cases).



Oh yes, there will be boobs.
It is a japanese game afterall.



The first Phoenix Wright was originally for the GBA and they ported it to the DS. As a special treat, they added a brand new case to play after the credits. This case is easily as long as the rest of the game with all its cases put together. They also present some new investigation tools which I thoroughly enjoyed like luminol and testing for fingerprints. They did this to show ways the touch screen could make the game more interesting and immersive and they did that. They accomplished it brilliantly. Too bad they forgot about it for all the rest of the series. It's like he suddenly forgets he can test for prints. Ok, so he gots bonked in the head in the first case of the second game but his memory returns eventually. And the first case is actually the second case! Oh nevermind.

The game does a real good job at making you relate to Nick. He's more than the sprite that plays out your actions. Since your first case you get the feeling that this guy has feelings, has friends, had a life before you showed up, has secrets, has quirks. The game was beautifully adapted and translated into English. Considering it's a game that depends solely on text to get you through it, a bad translation could've broken it for all of us but they took special care with it, one can tell.

Yes the game is super immersive, imho, and I can get lost playing it for hours on end and, yes, you can relate to Nick, the nervous attourney but at times you really wonder: what in the Maker's name is going on in Phoenix's head?

Most of the times one of two things happens: you've figured everything out and Phoenix is bluffing his way through the trial, Objecting to everything just because he can, reassuring you at every turn that he has no idea why he's doing the things he's doing. OR, Phoenix gets a sly grin splattered across his face and announces he's figured everything out while you still have no idea how or who did what when. Still, things usually end up ok and if they don't, well, the game let's you save at any time.

The world in general liked Phoenix Wright, as did I, and the Tubes is full of parodies and spoofs and homages and yaoi fan fiction. (Just search for Phoenix Wrong to get a few thousand resutls.) This, however, is the one I always liked the most.

Oh and they're apparently making a Phoenix Wright vs Professor Layton game. How awesome/weird is that?

It's Not Just You

So, during our vacation we were discussing the course of videogaming. Where we see it heading and if we like it or not.

It was a conversation that triggered pretty strong views or maybe it was just the smell of the ocean that riled us up. We, as a whole, are quite discontent with games and it's not just us. It's not just us that's tired of games. Games, apparently, are also tired of us. They're trying to reach a new audience, encompass the world. ore shum thinke...



View during said conversation

The point came up that being a gamer is fashionable nowadays. Not as mainstream as, say, having a Facebook account, but closer to... say... having read a book in the last year. "Why did everyone start playing WoW? Because all their friends were doing it." I'm not going to say I agree fully with this statement but it raises a valid point. Did a lot of people become gamers just because everyone else was doing it? Is it like smoking? Or complaining about the government? Or jumping off a bridge?
Another factor that might have helped gaming become more mainstream were tutorials. there was a time when you were dumped in a game with very little knowledge of the workings of the game. You'd first experiment all the buttons, finding the one that brings up the menu, tweaking any settings the game has and then reverting them to default just in case... It was a journey of discovery, it added to the mistique of the game, being uncharted territory that you had to brave and tame. It made it, for me at least, more enjoyable. There was a learning curve that began with remastering the controller and not just having your charaxcter(s) apply different skills/abilities at different times to achieve a purpose.

Nowadays you'll not only be presented with a picture of your controller with arrows and a description of what every button does but you'll probably won't get to dive in the game proper before you conquer one or three hundred tutorials. It's like you're a toddler and the game really doesn't want you to get hurt. Where were they when I first played Mario?

The point was then raised that we are, in fact, living a vicious cycle. Developers notice that other developers are lowering their standards (or broadening their sights, trying to lure in new players) so they, in turn, lower theirs to try and lure in more people by helping them every step of the way until they feel safe and confortable wrapped in the blanket of assisted playing. Players, having been dumbed down, now expect new releases to guide them through their first steps.

So where does that leave me and others like me? I don't mind dying a few times if it means you'll stop calling me dumb. I don't mind a bit of an initial challenge. Its not like we were spewed out of our mothers' bowels knowing how to walk and talk and wipe our own asses but nobody took me aside for the first months of my life to tell me what my legs were for or what this communication gig was all about. I experimented, tried and failed and, in the end, I think I did alright. It took a fucking long time and I'm not done learning yet but the ride was worth it. It was a challenge.

We didn't come to any real conclusion. It was just a state of the nation kind of thing. We can't expect the gaming industry to alienate new prospective players just because we know what an analog stick is for but it doesn't mean we like being reminded of it every single game. It makes the brain lazy and pretty soon we'll have to go back to Brain Age.

I'm going through the Phoenix Wright series again on my DS. I'm completely hooked. In fact, I'm gonna play some right now while I sigh of relief that I don't have a credit card registered in the PSN.