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Reminiscence
13 years ago
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for a comprehensive list of all of my significant writings, WIPs, and conceptual works posted as submissions and in journals.
(journal link) The flair of my writing, displayed for thoughtful browsing
for a comprehensive list of all of my significant writings, WIPs, and conceptual works posted as submissions and in journals.(journal link) The flair of my writing, displayed for thoughtful browsing
She enjoys portraying herself as a half-aware and dimwitted beast, drunken in the stupor of her own bodily composure.This journal may not likely be seen as something coherent. I just wanted to mention some things I remember. And since I'm a heavy gamer, all of these memories revolve around games. >.>
Vagrant Story
The sky. Every time I thought about this game, I thought about the sky. A mostly cloudless sunset, with blues and oranges in the sky's coloration.
I also had mild thoughts about the monster designs in the game. Mild, because I wasn't as much of a monster/creature enthusiast back in those days (even less so, since monsters have always been a prime source of my inner fears growing up.). I could only imagine what I saw in this game to the extent of a context that could likely feature something like what I saw, which is a bit of a limited perspective since the thoughts that came never went any farther. It was easy to imagine something like a tall "ogre" (of the visual interpretation of that game's lead artist) who had an incredibly strong arm with a one handed weapon, able to swing it with ease. But this game was rated "T" for Teen, so there was never an occasion where a thought like this was linked with anything gratuitously violent - I didn't think of blood and gore back then (except in the case of the final detailed event of the original story that featured some of my story characters, that I lost the inspiration to continue...). If I was a bit older at the time, I probably would have though, even though gratuitous violence wasn't very common in gaming media at the time. There was always this game's superb sound effects, which incited me to thoughts of literal metal. The clanging of weapons against something, producing a sound that seemed to perfectly go along with what it had collided against (even if that something was flesh. Ouch.).
Final Fantasy Tactics (of PS1 fame, which is the PSP's "War of the Lions")
Humanism. I couldn't play this game without thinking of something grounded in humanism. It might be safe to say that there was something else that came before this game in my life to make me focus so deeply on humanism, but if there was, I can't remember what. I had only read a handful of books that featured any depth of humanism conveyed through words, and whatever I was watching on TV wasn't likely a major cause for this kind of thinking (even though I would absorb the lines of characters more easily than the words of a school instructor... XD). Playing the role of a character who I was never so sure about the general standing of, who never seemed to exactly fit one specific character role. It wasn't that I couldn't identify with this protagonist or any of the game's other characters, but that I was simply lost on how to interpret their personalities. Their perspectives, however, was a whole 'nother story. It was easy to grasp that the "enemies" I would fight in the game's beginning battles were a people who were unjustly oppressed and rejected, and that the very idea of fighting them was a controversial subject in itself. Every major character had certain lines - lines I've mostly forgotten by now ;_; - that defined a moment, and sharply. That was partially the cause for my scouring of the internet for fanart of the characters of this game (upon the discovery of the website called "RPGfan."), of which there was an abundance. It was nice to see that so many people loved this game as much as they did, and as much as I did.
Sometimes I would write personal journal entries centered mostly around the menial happenings of my experiences with that game, albeit alongside my troubles with school cirriculum and homework. The music of that game never failed to impress me, and its special effects graphics were also a source of inspiration for my original story, particularly in the case of the White Magic spell called "Holy," which I detailed through narration in describing the death of a hostile "enemy character" at the very beginning of my story (I even kept the name of the spell cast identical to the one from the game. Plagiarism... XD).
This game, also like Vagrant Story, caused me to think of differing hues in the sky, since the game's background colors where always of a coloration that was meant to convey to the player the coloration of the sky. <3
Dino Crisis 2
Summer movies. While I can't say that this game was the LARGEST thing in the back of my mind causing me to think of such things, it added to that thought along with a few other games and events, one game in this case being a PS1 game based on the "Aliens" franchise. There may have been about two or three more games that brought about such thoughts, and though I'm sure there were, I don't remember their names. And that's fine by me, since for some reason the instance of thinking of a summer movie always strikes me as embarrassing...
For morbidly skewed reasons that I'm sure you can guess the nature of, the first game in this series had hooked me enough to warrent my splurging of a meager paycheck of mine on its sequel. And aside from those reasons being the largest reasons why I particularly liked this game, XD I really loved the faster, more fluid battle engine of this title over its previous incarnation. That had to be, for sure, the first time that I had experienced a quote "new age" videogame that offered that kind of calibur of action, since nothing before it came close. My brother had purchased "Resident Evil 3: Nemesis" around the same time as I had purchased this game, which only added to the pervasion of thoughts stemming from the likeness of summer movies. I couldn't argue with the fact that Resident Evil 3 was quite an action packed title, but it was only natural that I favored Dino Crisis 2 more. After all, with my love of the idea of having multiple guns at my disposal in a game, there was also the in-depth, intimate love of a certain kind of texture, along with a generally deep and sensuous taste for what I percieved as the "reptilian purring" of creatures that I wouldn't mind laying an ear against the bellies, chests, and necks of...
With the love of this game also came a certain longing for something of old, namely the era of the Sega Genesis. There is a certain section near the game's beginning, where the music turns to a passive piece that plays in the background across a larger span of "zones" (screens) for where it is that you're traveling. That music brought to mind more than just that, but the way it sounded gave off that sort of feeling in the extreme, and naturally. The Sega Genesis' days weren't too far behind back then anyway, so a love for things covered over with newer technology was common back then (even though I can honestly say that the idea of "going back there" wasn't among my most prevalent thoughts. We weren't as close to a singularity with older technology as we now are in this current day and age, which I love very much so. =D).
Xenogears
A "beasty" game to slog through (and simply that! ). I can honestly say with complete confidence that the single largest reason why I had ever done anything in this game that was worthy of mention...was all because of that ridiculously fallacious demo video of this game that was on a demo CD that came along with "Parasite Eve 1." That demo video where they purposefully sped up the screenplay and in-game animations to give off the illusion of a fast paced and incredibly exciting game full of mecha vs mecha action ad infinitum. And in addition to that seemingly tribal music that accompanied the video's short lived presentations, it all seemed to be an idea that was sexy enough to warrent...MY buying of that game? Ohh noo no, t'wasn't me who bought that beast. It was...my DAD?! And for CHRISTMAS of all things?!?! I guess when you're Christmas shopping in the year 2000 and you're too busy talking to a Wal-Mart store clerk about how "beasty" a game is - along with noticing that the only thing on its front cover is a middle-toned dude with a ponytail and a big red "X" across the word "Xenogears," - you're not really going to think of things like "Whoa mah gawd, THIS GAME IS HUGELY CONSPIRATIONAL!!!" And naturally so. Besides, who thinks of frivolus interpretations of God and angels and Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung philosophies when they look at box art like that?
I don't remember...ANYTHING...about what this game was talking about. At all. The plot was so ambiguous that I couldn't make a lick of sense out of it. One minute my green shirt wearing, glasses doning friend is kicking ass alongside me like it's nobody's business, and the next minute he's...floating around in limbo talking to some kind of giant computer thing that looks like it was pulled straight out of "The Transformers: The Movie (1986)"??? A simple "dafuq" is not proper enough...
But DAYUM could he kick ass! Never mind that his speed value pretty much negated the battle specific importance of all other characters though, except the main protagonist, Fei Fong Wong (Fei), and maybe the lead female protagonist, Elhaym Van Houten (Elly). I need to finish the character battle TODAY, Rico... :V
Suikoden 1 & 2
Once again, humanism. If Final Fantasy Tactics was the "epic cool kid on the block" that made me think of this when playing a game, the Suikoden series (of the PS1 era, specifically) only bostered those thoughts even more. There's something about having grown up as a kind of person who closey convenes with his sister and then playing through a game that features a female character similar to his sister...who dies later on in the story! And that was the point in the game where school and life had taken over my free time even moreso than before, to where I never had the time to play that game any further (that, or I just generally regressed from gaming altogether. I don't remember. It was over 12 years ago.).
Personally, I don't think the games of this day and age give people the kinds of feelings that they did years back, IF they give their players any feelings at all. I guess that in having "less flash" in those days we found more time to care about the characters of our games and books and TV shows. Things like watching as innocent characters - who you've grown accustomed to - are slaughtered by evil forces, or more positive things like watching as what seemed to be a minority rises up to a challenge and overcomes a trial, through the support of your character - your army even. Or things like the betrayal and militant defection of a close friend who later becomes a bitter, powerful enemy. Suikoden 2 was a beautiful game. I don't think that something like it could ever be as appreciated in this day and age as it was back then. Only amongst "hardcore" enthusiasts of older games, maybe, but not by the majority of gamers. They're too busy shooting everything that moves...
If you ever went over a youtube video of an old PS1 game or its music, you may have seen someone comment in saying something like "Good times." The times that I played the games I've mentioned here - amongst other games like "Sonic Adventure 1 and 2" and "Shenmue" - were generally good times. For some reason, whenever I think of something particularly great, I always look towards the sky, just to see how it looks. There have been some rather beautiful days over here where I live lately.
I think I need to spend more time being grateful of what I have rather than worrying about a multitude of things that I cannot and will never be able to change. Call it a freak habit of a guy who tries to characterize something as profound as an archangel or a "god" character... >_>
Even though the majority of it all consists of videogames, I have a very large ammount of things to be grateful for. Besides, we're long past the days of people ranting about how "videogames will only rot your brain!" Tell that to the likes of Hideo Kojima and Hironobu Sakaguchi, lol...
Vagrant Story
The sky. Every time I thought about this game, I thought about the sky. A mostly cloudless sunset, with blues and oranges in the sky's coloration.
I also had mild thoughts about the monster designs in the game. Mild, because I wasn't as much of a monster/creature enthusiast back in those days (even less so, since monsters have always been a prime source of my inner fears growing up.). I could only imagine what I saw in this game to the extent of a context that could likely feature something like what I saw, which is a bit of a limited perspective since the thoughts that came never went any farther. It was easy to imagine something like a tall "ogre" (of the visual interpretation of that game's lead artist) who had an incredibly strong arm with a one handed weapon, able to swing it with ease. But this game was rated "T" for Teen, so there was never an occasion where a thought like this was linked with anything gratuitously violent - I didn't think of blood and gore back then (except in the case of the final detailed event of the original story that featured some of my story characters, that I lost the inspiration to continue...). If I was a bit older at the time, I probably would have though, even though gratuitous violence wasn't very common in gaming media at the time. There was always this game's superb sound effects, which incited me to thoughts of literal metal. The clanging of weapons against something, producing a sound that seemed to perfectly go along with what it had collided against (even if that something was flesh. Ouch.).
Final Fantasy Tactics (of PS1 fame, which is the PSP's "War of the Lions")
Humanism. I couldn't play this game without thinking of something grounded in humanism. It might be safe to say that there was something else that came before this game in my life to make me focus so deeply on humanism, but if there was, I can't remember what. I had only read a handful of books that featured any depth of humanism conveyed through words, and whatever I was watching on TV wasn't likely a major cause for this kind of thinking (even though I would absorb the lines of characters more easily than the words of a school instructor... XD). Playing the role of a character who I was never so sure about the general standing of, who never seemed to exactly fit one specific character role. It wasn't that I couldn't identify with this protagonist or any of the game's other characters, but that I was simply lost on how to interpret their personalities. Their perspectives, however, was a whole 'nother story. It was easy to grasp that the "enemies" I would fight in the game's beginning battles were a people who were unjustly oppressed and rejected, and that the very idea of fighting them was a controversial subject in itself. Every major character had certain lines - lines I've mostly forgotten by now ;_; - that defined a moment, and sharply. That was partially the cause for my scouring of the internet for fanart of the characters of this game (upon the discovery of the website called "RPGfan."), of which there was an abundance. It was nice to see that so many people loved this game as much as they did, and as much as I did.
Sometimes I would write personal journal entries centered mostly around the menial happenings of my experiences with that game, albeit alongside my troubles with school cirriculum and homework. The music of that game never failed to impress me, and its special effects graphics were also a source of inspiration for my original story, particularly in the case of the White Magic spell called "Holy," which I detailed through narration in describing the death of a hostile "enemy character" at the very beginning of my story (I even kept the name of the spell cast identical to the one from the game. Plagiarism... XD).
This game, also like Vagrant Story, caused me to think of differing hues in the sky, since the game's background colors where always of a coloration that was meant to convey to the player the coloration of the sky. <3
Dino Crisis 2
Summer movies. While I can't say that this game was the LARGEST thing in the back of my mind causing me to think of such things, it added to that thought along with a few other games and events, one game in this case being a PS1 game based on the "Aliens" franchise. There may have been about two or three more games that brought about such thoughts, and though I'm sure there were, I don't remember their names. And that's fine by me, since for some reason the instance of thinking of a summer movie always strikes me as embarrassing...
For morbidly skewed reasons that I'm sure you can guess the nature of, the first game in this series had hooked me enough to warrent my splurging of a meager paycheck of mine on its sequel. And aside from those reasons being the largest reasons why I particularly liked this game, XD I really loved the faster, more fluid battle engine of this title over its previous incarnation. That had to be, for sure, the first time that I had experienced a quote "new age" videogame that offered that kind of calibur of action, since nothing before it came close. My brother had purchased "Resident Evil 3: Nemesis" around the same time as I had purchased this game, which only added to the pervasion of thoughts stemming from the likeness of summer movies. I couldn't argue with the fact that Resident Evil 3 was quite an action packed title, but it was only natural that I favored Dino Crisis 2 more. After all, with my love of the idea of having multiple guns at my disposal in a game, there was also the in-depth, intimate love of a certain kind of texture, along with a generally deep and sensuous taste for what I percieved as the "reptilian purring" of creatures that I wouldn't mind laying an ear against the bellies, chests, and necks of...
With the love of this game also came a certain longing for something of old, namely the era of the Sega Genesis. There is a certain section near the game's beginning, where the music turns to a passive piece that plays in the background across a larger span of "zones" (screens) for where it is that you're traveling. That music brought to mind more than just that, but the way it sounded gave off that sort of feeling in the extreme, and naturally. The Sega Genesis' days weren't too far behind back then anyway, so a love for things covered over with newer technology was common back then (even though I can honestly say that the idea of "going back there" wasn't among my most prevalent thoughts. We weren't as close to a singularity with older technology as we now are in this current day and age, which I love very much so. =D).
Xenogears
A "beasty" game to slog through (and simply that! ). I can honestly say with complete confidence that the single largest reason why I had ever done anything in this game that was worthy of mention...was all because of that ridiculously fallacious demo video of this game that was on a demo CD that came along with "Parasite Eve 1." That demo video where they purposefully sped up the screenplay and in-game animations to give off the illusion of a fast paced and incredibly exciting game full of mecha vs mecha action ad infinitum. And in addition to that seemingly tribal music that accompanied the video's short lived presentations, it all seemed to be an idea that was sexy enough to warrent...MY buying of that game? Ohh noo no, t'wasn't me who bought that beast. It was...my DAD?! And for CHRISTMAS of all things?!?! I guess when you're Christmas shopping in the year 2000 and you're too busy talking to a Wal-Mart store clerk about how "beasty" a game is - along with noticing that the only thing on its front cover is a middle-toned dude with a ponytail and a big red "X" across the word "Xenogears," - you're not really going to think of things like "Whoa mah gawd, THIS GAME IS HUGELY CONSPIRATIONAL!!!" And naturally so. Besides, who thinks of frivolus interpretations of God and angels and Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung philosophies when they look at box art like that?
I don't remember...ANYTHING...about what this game was talking about. At all. The plot was so ambiguous that I couldn't make a lick of sense out of it. One minute my green shirt wearing, glasses doning friend is kicking ass alongside me like it's nobody's business, and the next minute he's...floating around in limbo talking to some kind of giant computer thing that looks like it was pulled straight out of "The Transformers: The Movie (1986)"??? A simple "dafuq" is not proper enough...
But DAYUM could he kick ass! Never mind that his speed value pretty much negated the battle specific importance of all other characters though, except the main protagonist, Fei Fong Wong (Fei), and maybe the lead female protagonist, Elhaym Van Houten (Elly). I need to finish the character battle TODAY, Rico... :V
Suikoden 1 & 2
Once again, humanism. If Final Fantasy Tactics was the "epic cool kid on the block" that made me think of this when playing a game, the Suikoden series (of the PS1 era, specifically) only bostered those thoughts even more. There's something about having grown up as a kind of person who closey convenes with his sister and then playing through a game that features a female character similar to his sister...who dies later on in the story! And that was the point in the game where school and life had taken over my free time even moreso than before, to where I never had the time to play that game any further (that, or I just generally regressed from gaming altogether. I don't remember. It was over 12 years ago.).
Personally, I don't think the games of this day and age give people the kinds of feelings that they did years back, IF they give their players any feelings at all. I guess that in having "less flash" in those days we found more time to care about the characters of our games and books and TV shows. Things like watching as innocent characters - who you've grown accustomed to - are slaughtered by evil forces, or more positive things like watching as what seemed to be a minority rises up to a challenge and overcomes a trial, through the support of your character - your army even. Or things like the betrayal and militant defection of a close friend who later becomes a bitter, powerful enemy. Suikoden 2 was a beautiful game. I don't think that something like it could ever be as appreciated in this day and age as it was back then. Only amongst "hardcore" enthusiasts of older games, maybe, but not by the majority of gamers. They're too busy shooting everything that moves...
If you ever went over a youtube video of an old PS1 game or its music, you may have seen someone comment in saying something like "Good times." The times that I played the games I've mentioned here - amongst other games like "Sonic Adventure 1 and 2" and "Shenmue" - were generally good times. For some reason, whenever I think of something particularly great, I always look towards the sky, just to see how it looks. There have been some rather beautiful days over here where I live lately.
I think I need to spend more time being grateful of what I have rather than worrying about a multitude of things that I cannot and will never be able to change. Call it a freak habit of a guy who tries to characterize something as profound as an archangel or a "god" character... >_>
Even though the majority of it all consists of videogames, I have a very large ammount of things to be grateful for. Besides, we're long past the days of people ranting about how "videogames will only rot your brain!" Tell that to the likes of Hideo Kojima and Hironobu Sakaguchi, lol...
But the smallest exertion of hers could send a man flying; him, and possibly others as well, shattering much of the pride of many an unknowledgeable foe within mere seconds.(link) Something Massive (Unfinished)
(link) The Fetishism of My Works, Displayed For Easy Finding.
Go here -->
To see my YouTube videos! 
It's a lovely piece, yeah.
But "reminiscence" generally means "remembrance." I just wanted to blather about what some of my favorite old games made me think of (since EVERYBODY is too busy elsewhere to have any time to talk to me... *sighs*).