Gamer Girl Geeksquee!

From: ishtar
Received: 4/10/09 11:58:46 AM PDT
To: Nintendo
Subject: Webform: Wii > Where to Buy/Availability

RE: Fatal Frame IV

To Whom It May Concern:

I just wanted to send along a note letting you know how disappointed I am at the announcement that Fatal Frame IV will most likely not be made available in the United States.

I have been a Nintendo customer for many years (since the original NES system in fact). It was always sad that your platforms never ran this series prior to the forth installment (admittedly I had to play them on another platform). But in my humble opinion is probably one of the best Horror genre games out there.

Some things I enjoy about Fatal Frame:
* Non-violent alternative to standard First-Person Shooters. Unlike the Resident Evil and Silent Hill series, you do not arm yourself with weapons, but rather the much less violent camera.
* Amplified Scare Factor: due to the fact that you are essentially fighting with the camera, the scare is much greater than the standard horror genre, based on the much more up-close approach to your subject matter via the magnification of the view finder.
* Engrossing characters and a taste of other cultures: Due to the fact that you rarely interact with any other characters other than the ones you are playing, you become much more attached to the character(s). I especially like that many times there is very little dialogue, making the game much more subdued (and therefore scary due to the quietness) rather than cluttering up the story with witty banter and auxiliary characters. I also like that it gives a very in-depth look into Japanese horror, folklore and architecture, but not as to a point at which I believe it is only of interest to people who hail from that country.

Though unrelated to the game in question, I thought you should be aware of some of the reasons the Wii is my preferred platform:
* I love the small design (makes it easy to travel, so I never have to be without it)
* Its intuitive menus (so much easier to adjust settings and download content than that other Sony system)
* The controller is one of the most fun and intelligent gadgets to come along in the history of gaming
* The platform has a wide selection of games ranging from those that the young can play (my three year old LOVES WiiMusic and making Mii’s) to older crowds (Zelda, Metroid, Trauma Center) and everyone in between (Mario, Animal Crossing).

So it was with great joy that I originally heard the news that FFIV was being developed for the Wii; only to find out nine months after it’s Japanese release that it may not be available at all.

I am aware that Nintendo’s base audience has always been aimed at family oriented fare. I ask you however to consider that there are many of us adults who buy your products that occasionally want to play something a little bit more grown up. It is for this reason I ask if you would please reconsider releasing Fatal Frame IV for U.S. distribution.

And thier response:

Hello,
  Thank you for your recent email.  We appreciate your patience as we researched this issue.
 
At this time, Nintendo has no plans to publish Fatal Frame.  Your feedback regarding this game is important to us, so I’ll make sure to pass along your comments to the appropriate department.  If we get further information about this title, we will post it to our website (www.nintendo.com), so make sure to keep checking for all the latest news as it becomes available.
  Sincerely,
  Mina Harris
Nintendo of America Inc.

For those that don’t know the story behind “You Spoony Bard!” as a quote.. here’s a Cliffs Note lesson. The original English translation of FFIV (FFII) was essentially crap. Think like the most poorly dubbed Japanese movie you’ve ever seen in your life.. yeah it was like that. Towards the beginning of the game there’s a very intense scene between Tellah the Wizard and Edward the Bard. Edward is really a prince, who after growing bored with courtly life, decided to wander the world disguised as a bard, and then ran off with Anna, Tellah’s daughter. Edward is kind of frail both physically, and on occasion personality wise. Anyways they’re having this huge shouting match when Tellah randomly says “You Spoony Bard!” as an insult… I guess; but it always seemed really out-of-place. Those who have played the Japanese version say the phrase that is actually used is Kisama which is basically the rudest form of greeting, most closely translated as “bastard”, “scum” “son of a bitch” etc. “Spoony” however means something more like foolish and sentimental… traits which also describe Edward (as we learn later in the game). So there’s still a question of if the word was used accidentally (bad translation) or on purpose (either to avoid the swear word or to more accurately describe Edward’s character). Either way it’s one of the funniest sayings to come out of a Final Fantasy game.

In other news, speaking of Prince of Persia, there’s not only the movie coming out May 2010 (yeah still a long wait and I’ve already been wanting it to be done already since like last December) but in fact two new PoP games (DS version and an Everything else version)!!!! And yeah the sad part is I don’t even need to know anything about them and it makes me want to buy them.. however since that initial want I had been doing some research. So far it seems to have some plusses and negatives:

PROS: 1) It’s using the same game engine as “Assassin’s Creed” -well y’all already know how much I love that game engine (Anvil), especially as I want to use it for one of my own projects.. so uh yeah!! 2) Open World Structure – while technically this is closely related to point 1: it part of the fun of PoP is all the running, jumping, climbing walls/poles (putting on makeup while you’re up there.. oh no wait that’s Eddie Izzard never mind) etc. Having an open, non-linear environment only means more of this. In fact much like “Assassin’s Creed” I may just spend a bunch of time climbing around on rooftops than I do on the actual game plot. 3) New Moves – that Prince can never get enough of handy-dandy death-defying acrobatic moves… 4) Next Gen graphics – well this is kind of a gimme since it’s being released on Next-Gen systems. But I for one am looking forward to High-Def Princeleyness and besides have you seen some of the Persia scenes?! Holy crap!! 5) Stuart Chatwood returns – I swear to god, he’s one of my favorite composers.. like ever! Yeah he does mostly video games now (since “The Tea Party” broke up) but that doesn’t make him any less of a genius. I would buy the game simply for the soundtrack, even if the game sucked.. that’s how much I like this guy. (*basically the music in the background of the speed art video*)

CONS: 1) Character Redesign: hopefully things will change as the game progresses, but I’m not liking my Prince’s head all covered up. He looks more like Hattori Hanzo (SamSho) than the Prince of Persia IMHO.. but whatever… 2) Character Redesign 2: kind of a continuation of point 1, but once we do in fact see the Prince’s face.. it almost seems like they are trying WAY too hard to at least make it plausible for Jake Gyllenhaal to play him in the film. In other words they are going a tad out of their way to redesign the prince to look um less Persian…? Hey guys ~ he’s the Prince of PERSIA… right?! If you wanted the actor to look like the character you ought to have hired a Persian actor instead of trying to hire a name… but what the hell do I know? 3) No Farah!!!!! – no they’ve replaced her with Elika. Maybe once I see the storyline I’ll like it more.. but I like Farah and all the witty sexually repressed banter she and the Prince used to exchange… 4) Cell Shadey?! – I don’t think it’s technically cell-shaded animation, but something very similar to it. I can’t tell if I like it, but then I had the same reservation with “Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker“, and it eventually grew on me. It just seems a tad odd to put all this detail into the city backgrounds and then have the characters look like they fell out of Hanna Barbera. Then again the stuff I’m looking at is still in production, so it might not be the finished product.. yet *crosses fingers* *Oh, and as a random aside.. they’ve finally (after like 20 years) given the Prince a name (Apparently they needed to call him SOMETHING in the film). Dastan.. which translates as “Story”. Prince Story.. huh? O.K. if you say so… maybe they thought they were filming “One Thousand and One Nights”?*

You know, I’m all with the Penny Arcade guys (OK, well specifically Tycho) when they point out the short-comings of people who are STILL George Lucas fans. That dead horse was beaten long ago (right about the part in Jedi when the Ewoks show up). I was willing to let that go and gave the “prequels” a chance.. but there’s really just so much abuse a fan can take before we are no longer interested in what you have to offer us.

However another of my favorite corporate whores also seems to want to beat me senseless… Square-Enix. Fortunately for them, unlike the Star Wars franchise, I don’t think I could live without them or their games. However it is endlessly frustrating to me how they seem to force you into buying more than one console strictly to play their games. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I support thier right to cross-platform the crap out of themselves. I would even support if they wanted to do one series on one platform and one series on another. But for the love of god if I want to play a full series of a particular game, can you at least be consistent on what system it is going to be on?

Prime example of this include (but are not limited to)

Final Fantasy VII: Original game on the PS. Okay I can understand that since sequels/prequels to it were decided upon waaaaay after the fact that there’s going to be a system upgrade in order here. So I was OK with Dirge of Cerberus being on the PS2. I was even OK with Advent Children being on DVD, as well I already had a DVD player. It got a little iffy for me when Crisis Core went to the PSP. As of that point I did not yet have a portable system. Oh and I guess I shouldn’t even bother to mention how I STILL can’t seem to find a copy of Before Crisis anywhere (and even if I did I probably couldn’t read it and/or it won’t work on more recent model phones).

Final Fantasy XII: again original game on PS2, but sequel on the DS

Kingdom Hearts: original and sequel on PS, but the midquel (KH 11/2?) Chain of Memories on the GBA. 

And lastly Final Fantasy series in general – the straw that is proverbially breaking my camel’s back. I now have a DS, it was given to me as a gift. I do not yet have a PSP, and really don’t travel enough to warrant two portables on top of the fact that I already have a Wii and both a PS2 and PS3 (I kept the PS2 so I can play games up in NH). So why are they doing this to me?

FInal Fantasy  being rereleased on the PSP

Final Fantasy II being re-released on the PSP

Final Fantasy III already re-released on the DS

Final Fantasy IV already re-released on the DS 

Final Fantasy V it was already rerelased a while ago on GBA and PS, though I’m sure yet another re-tool is in order. For now fortunately I can play PS versions on my PS2.

Final Fantasy VI see FFV

Final Fantasy VII aside from complaints listed above, there has been an ongoing rumour about re-releasing this with the new character models since before Advent Children came out. I can only assume if they ever do this, it will be for the PS3 (or greater platform depending how long it takes them). 

In other S-E news, if you can buy Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes for iPod, it’s pretty damn cute and traditionally Square-ish.

I’m am now officially beta-testing Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, as if I needed another game to play! Amusingly I’ve never technically played the tabletop game, I’ve only watched people play it, but it always looked kind of neat and I am a sucker for pretty much any MMORPG. I felt like a total loser filling out the application when I started listing my online gaming experience, like the guy on the other end was picturing me as this gigantic fat pimple faced person with no life (like the female version of the guy in the World of Warcraft South Park Episode). It went kind of like this:
List the games you have beta tested:
Second Life
Everquest Online Adventures (PS2)
City of Villians

List all the MMORPGs you have played:
Second Life
Everquest Online Adventures (PS2)
City of Villians
City of Heroes
Everquest
Everquest 2
Final Fantasy XI
World of Warcraft
Anarchy Online
Star Wars Galaxy

The list of what I haven’t played is shorter! LOL! And of course I am also half tempted to sneak over and play Guild Wars with 

alienpigpen

which would add another to my list.

My husband likes General Hospital, as such I ended up being sucked into it as well. There’s a character in the show called Jason Morgan who is played by Steve Burton, who also happens to be the same guy who did English version voice acting for Cloud Strife of Final Fantasy VII in most of his recent incarnations (list here).

Anyways Steve Burton also happens to have blond-ish hair(not nearly as yellow as Cloud “Chocobo-Head” Strife)and blue eyes (not so much so that they have that “mako” glow) and is relatively built, so you can probably see where I’m going with this, it’s not really a stretch that Steve could play a live-action version of Cloud if he had to (though an older late 20s early 30s Cloud).

In the show he’s kind of the #1 thug to the mob kingpin of the area, which means he’s kind of constantly walking around being a tough guy and getting into heated arguements. Now this is the part in which I know I’ve been playing too many games, everytime he starts getting really pissed at someone I kind of half expect him to break out the Buster Sword (because I have no idea wtf the new sword is named) and go all Omni-Slash on someone’s ass!!!

Also if he felt like riding off into the horizon on Fenrir that would be kind of fun as well (though apparently almost no one in Port Charles owns any sort of vechicle, except of course when one is needed for a car-bombing… as they all just seem to magically appear in one place after another and never mention how they actually got there, LOL!).

Important event coming up June 5, 6 & 7. Everquest II is making a special NPC “Curt Schilling”. During those 3 days if you register at http://www.battleals.com you will be able to play Everquest II (I believe for free).

You will be able to try your hand at defeating the special NPC; for every person that does so Sony Online Entertainment will donate $5 to Curt Schilling’s ALS Association.

Even if you don’t care about the game, this is a very good cause, and I urge anyone who can to participate. More details at the Everquest II website:: http://eq2players.station.sony.com/en/news_archive.vm?id=796§ion=News&month=current

I should not have even started this conversation, should have just walked away.

I dunno if it’s a product of too many of my friends being on hard times or what but maybe I was just spoiling for a fight. I do really like MMORPGs 90% of the time. It’s a nice way to waste some time, I like the adventure and quests, and spending time with friends. Note that “friends” is the operative word here, I almost never will group with people I do not know, and the main reason has always been I seem to have the unfortunate luck to find the one 12 year old with a god complex.

Someone first of all comes up and kill steals my quest monster “a sand monitor” then has the audacity to ask me to group. I politely decline for the two previously mentioned reasons by saying “No thank you” and start to walk away, because I know from past experience if I hang around this idiot is gonna keep stealing my kills and keep hounding me until I group with them. As I am walking away they ask me to duel. I never duel, it’s lame and pointless and for people with small penises (ok in which case you would think I would like it since I have no penis… but I digress). I click the “no” and continue walking away determined to get away from this loser and then they OOC (so the whole game can hear it) “sissy” and then says “run woos{translate as wuss}”.

While I admit my typing is as bad as the next person; something about this {poor spelling, no punctuation, and never used any capital letters} indicated I was probably dealing with a teenager here. Why they were not in school is a whole different mystery. Normally I would be way too dignified to even justify this with a response; but like I said I must have been spoiling for a fight because I ended up giving them a private tell “What are you fucking 7? I am not running away, I was already walking before you even challenged me. I just do not like grouping with people I do not know”.

So of course idiot child continues their uneducated rant “ohh poor baby” “u arent ne good so fucking get over it”. I really should have stopped, but suddenly felt compelled to try and mother this idiotic kid and maybe teach them some respect. (Meanwhile on chat channel the same person is having an argument with some other person on who is a noob and who is not a noob and they both have stupid teenybopper spelling and sound like they have a 3rd grade education… but again again I digress). I say “So do you normally harass people you do not know for no reason? I suppose you think it is funny? FYI I don’t group because I have a 7 month old kid and it is not fair to the rest of the group that I constantly have to go AFK to take care of her. I also do not duel because I often play with one hand which makes it difficult for me to chainspell, and I just don’t like dueling in general. Next time before you give someone a hard time you may want to consider their feelings and their circumstances”.

I think they felt a little bad.. but not really because they continued to act like an idiot: “i didnt harrass i was wanting a freindly duel or group” (Yeah your actions so far could in no way be considered harassment… nope.) “well poor guy” “i do to” (Yes the typo is here purposely that is what this person wrote.. they are also assuming because I play a male character that I am a male, so pretty frigging intelligent there). “and i take very well care of my kid and manage to play” (Oh really? I am sure if you even are an adult and even have a kid, although I am sure you are lying, that you must take “very well care” of your kid in whatever bumfuck West Virginia town you and your cousin decided to get married and have children in, my 7 month old has better verbal skills that this asshole!). I of course kept picking at it… silly me. “What is your issue? I tried to decline your invitation nicely and you are acting like a child?” “no i didntwas trying to get you to duel”

Finally they back down and semi-apologize (by saying “have a good day man no harm done”) as I was typing this next thing(good enough for me.. I stopped paying attention after I finished)”Yes and then you verbally attack me when I said no, instead of just accepting that someone does not want to do something and walking away nicely. That is all I ask, just accept it and don’t make a scene about it. Thank you for apologizing have a good day.” CRIKEY!! Now I don’t feel like playing anymore.. it was supposed to be relaxing.. and now of course I am so NOT relaxed.