Marvel vs Capcom 2 Trailer is Totally Tubular

Joe’s not the only special person around here. Okay, maybe he is. But I have my own memories of Marvel vs Capcom 2.

In the years 2000/2001, I was going through an awful college experience at a facility that taught me absolutely nothing. I skipped many of my classes and hung out at the college’s little arcade, and played a lot of Marvel vs Capcom 2.

Um, that’s about it, really.

The Marvel vs Capcom games never really caught on fire with me. Seeing as I still associate the second game with that sad little arcade that I occupied during one of the most confused years of my life, I doubt I’ll ever grow to like them.

I do, however, love the trailer Capcom has together to trumpet the re-release of Marvel vs Capcom 2. Stan Bush, Capcom, and Marvel: a threesome made in Heaven.

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Marvel Vs Capcom 2, I’ve Missed You

Marvel Vs Capcom 2 and me, we go way back. The Dreamcast was the first console I ever bought with my own real money, the player two controller the first thing I ever owned on store credit (and I swear, I will pay that back some day). The two-player game that necessitated such bad judgment was, naturally, Marvel Vs Capcom 2. And the Japanese version, too, even though that version had that idiotic arcade-only character unlocking system and there wasn’t an arcade cabinet within 1,000 miles able to accept my sweaty little VMU. The alternative was to wait for the US version. It wasn’t an alternative at all.

I am being 100% honest when I say I spent my prom night with that exotic jewel. When I got to college, the American version—hey, I had to unlock B.B. Hood somehow—became my most consistent and reliable lover. I’ve invented tournaments and drinking games based on its button-mashing bounty. It is my fighter. It is mine.

You probably know that Capcom is making it a downloadable game, that they gave it to Backbone to do something Backbone is notoriously uneven at—tarting up a classic game in high def. A demo came out today, so I did what I had to do: make sure they did right by my baby.

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Breath of Fire 2 Retranslated

Over the years, the fan translation scene has retranslated quite a few games, with Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger being some of the more notable examples. I’ve never been the biggest fan of these retranslations, mostly because the quality of the existing text never seemed to merit all of that extra effort; and besides, with the plethora of RPG remakes happening these days, it isn’t unusual for a developer go back and refine a localization themselves, as we’ve seen with most of the Final Fantasies.

However, there are some games out there that’ll never have an official remake transform them into something intelligible–like Breath of Fire 2, for example. I rarely noticed bad localizations when I was a pre-teen, but Capcom’s JRPG sequel actually alienated me with its strange, new form of English I had previously been unaware of. At the age of 12, I quit BoF2 then and there when I read the game’s description of a fishing rod (or “lod”): “be used for fishing.” Sorry, but I have a problem with translations unable to conjugate irregular verbs.

Now that 15 long years have passed, we can only be happy that someone out there has finally made Breath of Fire 2 intelligible.

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The 61FPS Interview: Victor Ireland of Gaijin Works and Working Designs, part 2

In the second part of our interview, Victor Ireland talks the evolution of the JRPG, writing in videogames, the loss of identity in Japanese videogames, and some of his greatest hits.

As someone who’s been steeped in JRPGs for their whole career, where do you see the genre going? Popular opinion these days is that the entire genre is stagnating, about to die off.

VI: I completely agree that it’s stagnant. The stereotypical JRPG has become the stereotypical JRPG. There are so many clichés, the story and writing are so vanilla that it’s just not fun to play anymore. That’s why personality and character are so important. JRPGs love big twists, they love to stack twists on twists. If you have these cardboard characters that you don’t care about, then when you have the big twist, it doesn’t matter. You need to enjoy the characters, to identify with them. For an American script, that identification has to come one-hundred percent from witty banter, back and forth, character background that isn’t explicit exposition. Care and craft in characters is what’s missing. Technically they’re great, they’re beautiful games. Tales of Vesperia was great. I loved the look of it. The story failed though. I just didn’t care about the characters.

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The 61FPS Interview: Victor Ireland of Gaijin Works and Working Designs, part 1

Victor Ireland is a peculiar figure in the grand history of videogames. Throughout the 1990s, he was a virtual Marco Polo, bringing distinctly Eastern artifacts to the West through his publishing house Working Designs. Ireland succeeded where Nintendo, Sega, and so many others failed; he brought the JRPG to America. Since Working Designs dissolved in 2005, the devoted cult of Lunar, Growlanser, and Alundra fans have been waiting with baited breath to hear what Ireland’s new localization house, Gaijinworks, was up to. Their first game, the Hudson-developed crime adventure Miami Law, is out in June. In the first part of 61FPS’ interview with Victor Ireland, we discuss Gaijinworks’ inheritance of the Working Designs legacy and how bringing Japanese software to the west is a whole new game.

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Anticipation Time: Nostalgia for the DS

A little over a decade ago, Namco created the Playstation RPG Tales of Destiny as a sort of throwback to those old-school RPGs of yore–that’s how it was marketed, anyway. And not soon after that, other RPGs like Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete took this same, simple approach as an intentional contradiction to the 32-bit era, when RPGs were becoming increasingly grandiose and stupid, losing all of the storybook adventure charm they once had. It’s only gotten worse since then.

Truth be told, I’ve finally snapped out of my Japanese RPG love this generation after forcing myself to play through far too many lousy titles from the genre; and it’s only been fantastic fossils like the remakes of Final Fantasy IV and the Super Famicom Dragon Quests that have kept me from writing off the JRPG forever. So why in the hell did it take me so long to hear about the appropriately-named Nostalgia, an old-school DS JRPG made by Matrix and Red, two developers with a rather impressive (though low-key) pedigree? Hopefully the shame I feel is apparent without resorting to the use of emoticons.

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Lilt Line, Tilt & Touch Solo Fun That Isn’t Technically a Sin

Developer Different Cloth’s website refers to itself as a games collective that “passionately believes that one person, with a little help from a few friends sometimes, can rightly be called a games collective.” Conclusion: Different Cloth is one dude. By the name of Gordon. He makes games. There are three on his website, all of which are…well…odd.

But this week Gordon released his first game for the iPod/iPhone, a stylish rhythm racer called Lilt Line. The game’s presentation is halfway between bitGenerations: DotStream and thousands of new wave concert flyers from the 1980s, all sharp angles and neon colors. And nothing says retro 1980’s graphics quite like gradients. Oh, yeah! Continue reading »

Freaktastic Fanart: Happy Birthday, Pixel!

It’s Pixel’s birthday! Let’s give a round of applause to the one-man band that put together Cave Story, the most well-rounded, well-balanced, and charming freeware platformer of all time.

In honour of Pixel’s womb ejection, Nicalis.com posted some sexy Cave Story fanart by Adam Atomic. It was drawn with love.

Incidentally, Nicalis.com confirms that the Cave Story remake will be hitting WiiWare sooner than later. The projected release date is the end of May, with extensive play testing being the reason for the game’s heart rendering delays. If you’ve never spent time with Quote, Curly, Sue, the Puppies and King (he will cut you), be prepared for a rollicking good time.

View Adam Atomic’s awesome work behind the jump.

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Game Auctions: Going Once, Going Twice…

Start whipping some candles and collecting dropped money bags: eBay has an auction for an unopened, complete copy of Earthbound for the SNES. It’s the perfect salve to persistent rumours that we’ll never see Nintendo’s most coveted RPG for release on the Virtual Console.

It’s all yours for $400 USD. (Clicks refresh) $700 USD. There are four days remaining, so that should be enough time to get used to the idea of cutting your veins and singing a contract with Lucifer using your own blood.

I’m always interested in eBay’s rising and falling retro games “stock market.” A game’s value tends to reflect how easily it can be emulated. I remember when Mega Man X2 and Mega Man X3 were impossible to emulate thanks to Capcom’s “C4 chip,” which displayed vector wireframe graphics for miniboss purposes. The ZSNES emulator was eventually retooled to display C4 wireframes. Mega Man X2 lowered in price as a result, and Mega Man X3’s inflated eBay price dropped—though interested collectors still have to cough up a significant number of pennies. The game was released late in the SNES’ life, and few copies were printed.

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What’s in my MP3 Player: Top Gear 2 “Dance Nation”

It is a gray day.  It was gray yesterday and the day before.  I don’t know what the weather is like where you’re at, but here south of Chicago rain has become the daily norm for the past month. Lake sized mud puddles dot the landscape and have become permanent features of the terrain. Ducks are living in my back yard. I saw a heron wading through water up to its ankles across a farm field. It’s rather wet around here.

When skies are the color of slate and you’re inside organizing files or doing homework or dusting, it’s nice to have some music playing that you can bob your head to and pass the time. The latest remix from “bLiNd” fits the bill.

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