Accidental Cannibalism Was Actually Low On The List

In this post:
1. Yet another scary movie that I bet most of you folks have never seen, let along heard about!
2. My re-cap of the Doomsday Film Fest.
3. Another gallery opening for Sweet Rot.
4. My change in Halloween plans.
5. Seriously, the worst Wii game I have ever played.
6. I’m just trying to help to make a place where gamers can, you know, hang out.
7. And meet The Dudleys!

Time once more for yet another “stuff that happened this past week” rundown…

A Comic About A Horny, Zombie Girlfriend

- Immediately after filing my Capcom Fight Club report last Friday, I ventured into Queens, over to Hilary’s, for some dinner and yet another scary movie. Brought over a bunch of fairly obscure choices from Asia, and much to my surprise, Hilary totally went for the true-life account of some crazy guy in Macau who rendered the flesh of his victims into pork bun stock for the restaurant that he ran. And which the local detectives would often dine on, unwittingly of course, as they attempted to crack the case. Again, based on a true story! It’s called The Untold Story and stars Anthony Wong as the crazy, in a role that managed to nab him the Honk Kong Oscar for best actor! And here we have Hilary’s illustration from that film…

… Believe it or not, accidental cannibalism is one of the less crazier things that happens. You also have rape with chopsticks and children getting beheaded, among other heinous acts. We also spent the evening going over our plan of attack for the following weekend. Because…

- The Doomsday Film Festival & Symposium went down this past Saturday and Sunday, where I spoke about “stuff”. Day one was the Doomsday In Video Games panel, which was preceded by a screening of the 80s video game cinematic classic WarGames. I can’t believe I haven’t reviewed it for GSW by now. I had also forgotten how hot Ally Sheedy was at the time. Though before all that, had lunch at the Chinatown bakery that Katie and I always frequent, where they have the absolute best pork buns imaginable; needless to say, the previous night’s viewing had little effect on me (maybe since I’ve seen the movie so many times), whereas Hilary flat out refused to have Chinese for dinner afterward!

And how did that go by the way? Eh…. Alright I guess. Definitely not one of my best appearances, that’s for damn sure. Basically, I wasn’t as prepared going on as I normally am. plus there were also a host of technical issues that really got in the way. A word of advice for those who plan on running a panel of any sort: if you’re going to provide a laptop for your presenters, for God’s sake, please make sure that the right and left mouse buttons are set to normal. They were switched because the owner is left-handed. Plus the audience just wasn’t feeling it; Hilary did her best to be a plant and throw out questions, but her alone asking would have been just too obvious. But in the end, the event’s organizer loved the presentation, and that’s really what mattered the most.

- After my thing, Hilary and I made our way to a ramen shop in St. Mark’s, since like I said, Chinese was out of the question. Besides, we were in the mood for curry ramen anyway. I next ventured into Brooklyn for MF Gallery’s Seventh Annual Halloween Art Show, at their new home in either in Carroll Gardens or Gowanus. Sorry, I’m not so up to code with my Brooklyn zoning… perhaps Mike can clarify. Won’t dwell on hellish nightmare that was dealing with the F train; all I’ll say is how I remember a time in which the F was one of the more reliable subways. The key annoyance was how the train itself terminated a few stops in, which was then replaced by a shuttle bus, every commuter’s best friend, especially on the weekends. Another thing I have to ask is how, I thought the whole point of a bus that replaces a train was to, you know, follow the same damn route? Anyway, some pics from the show…

… Maybe you spot the lead singer of DETHRACE lurking about. Well here’s Joe Simko and myself…

It was actually somewhat of a costumed affair, since you know, Halloween. Like June here, not just looking like a mime but moving like one too…

As for the show itself, can you guess which one is Joe’s?

And here’s Katie taking a midnight stroll through the forest, on her way to grandmother’s…

… Actually, we were just trying to figure out what where the hell the subway station was, at least one that was actually operational.

- The following day was the Doomsday In Literature, Poetry & Comics panel. And that one went far better than the previous day’s, thank goodness. Bob Fingerman was one of the speakers, whom I was happy to cross paths with once again; the first time I met Bob was about 12 years ago, when he was a guest at Joey Cavalieri’s writing for comics class, in which his first bit of advice for everyone was to drop out of SVA asap! I believe Hilary was able to explain that the school has gotten a tad bit better since then. Speaking of Ms. Flordio, Hilary discussed apocalyptic themes as they pertain to Japanese comics, and one very popular example among the audience that day was this page from a doujinshi in which some college student can’t get his homework done because his horny, zombie girlfriend keeps pestering him for sex…

… I should perhaps re-post the rest of it over at the forum one day. The best part is when her brain plops out during an orgasm!

- Back to Halloween, some bad news: not gonna be Hideo Shimazu this year after-all. I’ve just been too damn busy to figure out how to make the shoulder blades. Plus, Katie’s been bugging me since day one that no one is going to recognize who the hell I’m supposed to, and unfortunately, she has a point. Perhaps a Rival Schools character is more appropriate for an animu convention. Hence why I’m going to be Andrew Dice Clay instead! Actually, Katie and Joe and June all suggested a 1950s greaser, and since that’s what the Diceman basically looks like, plus I do a halfway decent impression of the guy (though it’s nowhere near as excellent as my Bob Dylan or Randy Newman), there ya go. But not only that, I’m gonna be the Hipster Diceman! What does that mean exactly? It means checking out old comedy routines of his, and repeating them verbatim, but with topical names strewn about like Santo’s House Party, Lightning Bolt, Crystal Castles, Brooklyn Vegan, hipster runoff, and the L train.

Though another reason for the switch was how Katie is more interested in just being vanilla plain Red Ridding Hood then B. B. Hood. Oh well.

Nothing’s Scarier Than A Naked Asian Boy… Yup

In honor of tomorrow, I wanted to do something a little special. Some might recall Dave’s neat little essay on horror games last year, and to mark this year’s day of the dead, I felt something similar was in order. So a review of the video game version of Ju-On for the Wii (or Jew-On as Hilary likes to call it) seemed like a no-brainer. But unfortunately… not happening, sorry. I only review titles that I’ve “completed” to a certain degree, and that’s just not possible in this instance.

Here’s the deal: the “game” if you want to call it that (actually, its being advertised as a “haunted house simulator”) is being published by XSEED, which I’m a big fan of. To the point that I’m perhaps a bit biased when it comes to their offerings. Though I still stand by my assertion that Flower, Sun, and Rain is the best DS game this year, hands down! Though I simply dig any company that takes risks and publishes totally off the beaten path offerings from Japan, like The Wizard of Oz: Beyond The Yellow Brick Road, which I’ll be getting into a bit later down the road (please excuse the pun). Hence I want XSEED to succeed, and similar to how fearful I was that all those semi-mediocre releases from Atlus this past summer was going to do them far more harm than good, I’m equally concerned by XSEED’s decision to bring out the game in question. Not saying that this one crappy title has the power to completely destroy the company, but I can easily envision some poor, hapless soul wasting his or her hard-earned money of Ju-On and immediately responding with “F*ck this game and the folks who put out this piece of sh*t! I feel like driving down to their offices with a bomb strapped to my chest.”

Despite my penchant for bitching and moaning about pretty much anything, I was initially going to adopt a “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” stance. Yet upon reflection, my mind is still blown by how completely horrendous my time spent with the game was, to the point that I genuinely have the need to warn others. With the ugly truth being that the levels of wretchedness this game manages to achieve is so absurd that it simply defies description; after my one and only play through, Katie noted how she simply couldn’t wait to see what I had to say. But I find myself for a loss of words… it’s like asking why does the sun feel good on the skin? Why is the purring of kitty cat so soothing? That kind of stuff. Which is why I’m essentially stalling, since I just can’t come up with the proper words to properly convey my sense of anger and betrayal. At not just towards XSEED and the actual developers of the Ju-On but video games as a whole. Though I one thing I can say with absolute certainty is how it so perfectly encapsulates every single negative stereotype that the Wii is known for. For all the Nintendo haters out there, who are convinced that the company is killing the medium and how their system has set gaming back however many years, good news: you finally have a smoking gun.

The game starts with it asking what your sign is. Okay. Then you choose a gender. But what’s the point? Each level features a different character with a preassigned sex anyway. Episode one kicks off with you chasing after your dog, easily the ugliest, worst animated canine ever in a video game. It wanders into some creepy, abandoned building, and you follow suit. Gameplay consists of stumbling around in the dark with a flashlight. That’s it. There’s no combat, no nothing. Well, you have to go through doors, most of which are locked, so the primary action is actually looking for keys. That and batteries for your flashlight; once it’s lights out, the game is over. Often a key is clear across the other side of the room, which wouldn’t be such an issue if not for the fact that your character moves REALLY slow. I mean, to an agonizing degree; you’ll be screaming at the television to go faster, guranteed. It’s to the point that you will also lose half your battery power walking just 20 feet. Controls itself is laughably bad; the Wiimote mimics the flashlight, which is fine, but there’s lag, plus it sometimes just goes in a direction all by itself. At times you will literally find yourself spinning around in circles. So half the struggle is to get your flashlight to point towards the direction you want to go, to then hit the B button, which is allows one to move forward. I love how when walking up a flight of stairs, there’s more sounds of footsteps made than are actually being employed. The sound design sucks, with effects lifted straight from a royalty free CD, or so it feels like. The visuals are actually not all that bad, simply by virtue of not being offensive. It’s just serviceable, or at least the environments. As for the spooky stuff… oh boy.

Here’s where the game gets really sh*tty: occasionally you’ll open a door or go down a hallway and a pale girl with really long black hair will pop out of nowhere and maybe start crawling towards you. This will be followed by onscreen directions to let you know which direction to shake your Wiimote at, though from my experience, it’s always to the right. If successful, you’ll retreat five feet, but due to the extremely linear nature of the levels, the only option to continue towards where you were going. But that’s okay, because the threat is now long gone. That’s… really not how most horror movies, horror games, and haunted houses work if I’m not mistaken. The important question though is if any of this is scary. Any guesses? The second level pits you in the middle of a hospital where, surprise, all the lights are off. Yet the power still works since you can turn on all the televisions in the empty hospital rooms. Which might be part of some kind of puzzle, who the hell knows, everything in the game is so vague and confusing. I forgot to mention that after the end of the first level (which btw just ends, there’s no boss battle or anything like that, you just find yourself in an elevator with your dog that comes out of nowhere, and that gets filled with hair), you’re rated according to how scared you were. How this is determined, who the hell knows, and I absolutely cannot stand games where you’re judged via unclear criteria, so one has zero idea how to improve the next time. Back to level two: despite the hospital floor being quite small and having just four or so empty rooms, all right next to each other, exploring the space takes forever due to the aforementioned walking pace, akin to an elderly person dealing with arthritics. Perhaps the reason why you’re there is to finally get that broken leg taken care off? All the while, you’ll see a naked Asian boy run across from you, which is hardly scary but more in the realm of hilarious. Almost cute even. Oh, did I also mention that, whenever you get a fresh battery, you still hold onto the dead ones? So you’re this idiot, stumbling around in the dark with pockets filled with empty batteries. After struggling to figure out what the f*ck is going on and what I’m supposed to do for what felt like 20 minutes, I finally ran out of juice and was “killed” by the pale girl. Yay. Sorry, but there is no way in hell that I’m giving that game another millisecond of my life.

As boring as the description was, now imagine playing it. A part of me wants to just get the damn thing out of my sight and run down to Gamestop, to put it towards a copy of New Super Mario Bros Wii. Though another wants me to hold onto the game, for historical purposes. I actually feel like an idiot for spending so much time on it as is; Katie asked if I ever do another top ten list of worst games ever created, will Ju-On be included. And while it certainly qualifies, I almost don’t want to think about it anymore. Though me rambling on about it like a retard is perhaps all the more pointless considering how I honestly can’t imagine anyone wanting a video game adaptation of a movie that already sucked to begin with. On a side note, I still don’t get why white people find the stuff in Asian films, like The Grudge and The Ring, so scary since they play up to Asian sensibilities so much. Or Japanese, since I’m party Korean and I don’t find pale little girls with long black hair scary the least bit. Perhaps it speaks volumes of the sad state of scary stuff today? You’ve got crap like the Saw movies and needless remakes of classic films still making tons of money, and worst of all, folks thinking that crap is actually good. Though that’s a whole different issue which I should have perhaps spent time on instead of this worthless pile. For the record: Ju-On the video game is quite possibly the worst Wii game ever created. Pure sh*t. Period.

Ugh, why am I still talking about this?!?! Moving on…

Creating A Place For Gamers To Hang Out (Part 1 of ???)

Back to stuff that went down this week, on Tuesday I also spoke to a person who dropped me a line after reading my old To Live And Game In NY piece for GSW, which as most people know was recently expanded upon for the latest zine. Let’s just call him Tom for right now, and he wanted to talk about one of the things covered, that being Game Time Nation, the short lived video game lounge that existed in Union Square. Which if I’m not mistaken, is the same exact location where Play N Trade resides this very day. Anyhow, Tom wants to start up his very own home base for local gamers to meet-up and kick back, for his neck of the woods, which is somewhere in upstate in New York. And the purpose of the call was to dig deeper as to why Game Time Nation ultimately failed and if such an operation would thrive today if conditions are slightly different.

I basically tried describing a bit about the game culture here by explaining how that NYC gamers, for whatever reason, are seemingly less than interested in a gather spot that they can call their own. I guess Chinatown Fair is all that anyone needs? It might have to do something with the fact that what’s been offered has simply been not up to snuff; on a semi-related note, for years, various parties have attempted to create something akin to E3 to cash in on the supposed interest of New Yorkers. Yet each has fallen flat on their faces, mainly because they’ve just been pale comparisons to the real deals. Which is mostly due to the inherent costs involved; E3 works so well in California simply due to the fact that most game companies (at least the ones that matter, such as Capcom) have their US headquarters located there, plus its just that much closer to Japan. The New York Comic Con and New York Anime Fest have both done a great job of filling such a demand, mostly since other bases are also being covered, making things far more cost effective in the end. It also needs to be pointed out that most of the diehard gamers who come out are from the outside NYC metro area. Basically New Jersey and Long Island. This is something I still can’t figure out, why native New Yorkers seem almost blas? when it comes to gaming.

Another possible reason that Game Time Nation went belly up was due to cost. Why pay money to hang out in NYC when one can simply sit on a stoop and people watch, which provides hours of free entertainment here in the city? Whereas in the burbs, in which there’s not much to do, I can totally understand the need for a gathering spot. Tom mentioned of a place in Jersey that sounds similar to GTN, but which is seemingly doing quite well for itself. I suggested that he drop them a line and see how they’ve managed to stay afloat, which appears to be for a good number of years now. I also encouraged him to check out. Though it would appear that a good deal of their business is reliant upon parties and the like.

One of Tom’s primary questions was what it would take for someone such as myself, or any gamer really, to frequent a place that he had in mind. My response was that I’m perhaps a poor example, since my tastes are certainly not reflective of the gaming audience at large. Though I personally would any place in which I could easily play games that are not readily accessible for me, that being a wide variety of shumps. And I’m fairly certain that friends of mine, like Dave and Joe Salina, would feel the same way. But again, we hardly reflect the taste of the masses, which obviously needs to be catered with most business ventures, especially this one. Its here that Tom confessed that he honestly has little idea what folks are into, let alone what’s going on. He doesn’t own a Xbox 360, PS3, or Wii. Some folks might roll their eyes upon hearing this, and wonder about the potential of what he’s trying to do, but all I can say is that it’s not all shocking, if anyone knows anything about business. Plus his heart is in the right place.

That being said, I did offer a bit of warning about the current landscape; the idea of having a bunch of consoles in a suitable for hanging out environment is already a bit of a hard sell to begin with, and that’s without one of the most popular facets of gaming today to consider, one that Game Time Nation didn’t have to contend with. It’s true that the internet has become a replacement of sorts of the arcades from the 80s and 90s, but he social networking aspects that have recently become engrained makes this a whole lot more complicated; folks play not just to have fun but to boost their achievement scores or the number of trophies. And that stuff isn’t exactly portable (it’s not exactly easy or even possible in some instances).

But these issues, and others, I hope to help Bob out with in the months to come. I’ve agreed to lend him information or advice whenever he needs it, and in return, I’ll be chronicling his endeavor! Ultimately, I would love to see Tom succeed… the idea of a place for gamers to hang out is still a good one in this day and age, I still believe… and perhaps if he makes all the right moves, it might set an example for others to follow. Yet at the same time, I also don’t want to see Tom lose a ton of money either. Stay tuned.

World 4-2, Dinner Land

Last night I attended the dress rehearsal for a new play called The Dudleys with Dave and our pal Mal. But first, some pics of the location; it went down at an art space in the basement of an office building on Wall Street. As you can see, it used to be a bank!

As for the play itself, it’s essentially a look back at a broken family presented as a messed up Nintendo game. All of the backgrounds were done entirely in 8-bit and projected. Here’s an example early on, during the play/game’s intro…

Those two are the Dudley boys, running through their hometown, located in Utah. The oldest is on the right, whose the most level-headed of the bunch, but mostly by default, and the youngest to the left, who is a bit of a f*ck-up with anger issues. To round out the bunch is the middle child, their sister, who has the brightest future but is also constantly banged up. She’s super accident prone, though it’s inferred throughout that all the wacky reasons behind her bumps and bruises are just smokescreens, that they’re all by the hands of her abusive boyfriends. To round out the clan is mom, whose the new head of the house; the story revolves around them coping with loss of the father to cancer, which leads to a crisis of faith on the mother’s part. Early on she decides to drop Mormonism (this is Utah after all) and become a Jew, much to the shock and dismay of her children. Primarily the youngest child, who had to go to go door to door in Argentina I believe to convert people, which I guess is a right of passage for all Mormons. Then you have the aunt, who runs a non-traditional treatment center for various ailments, including cancer. One that doesn’t work very well quite frankly. Her inability to treat her sister’s ailing husband becomes a prime source of tension, naturally. She has a daughter, who?s a runaway, mostly due to recently surfaced memories in which she recalled her father (who at this point has left the house) sexually abusing her. As well as how her mother allowed it to happen without much interference. Plus there’s the cop, who seems a nice enough guy, though his obsession with paint ball is, among other things, obsessive.

To a certain extent, The Dudleys is your typical family melodrama, one that deals with all the usual issues: along with the aforementioned crisis of faith are ones relating to identity, unfulfilled expectations, as well as misguided ones, coping with the ugly truth, as well as determining its validity, and everything in between. The key difference here being that everything is wrapped in a NES-like package. Every vignette is presented as a different level, with video game-y elements sprinkled about in each scene, either directly or indirectly. In addition to helping to present a person’s memories of the past in a fractured manner, which is often affected by one’s coping mechanism at the time, the labeling of each scene with level numbers like 1-2, 3-1, & 3-5 goes a long way to help keeping track of what’s going on, since everything is presented out of order. In that sense, not only is the video game motif quite ingenious by itself (my primary fear that it would be abused for the sake of nostalgia, which thankfully is not the case) but also extremely functional. And in addition to setting the scenes, the 8-bit backgrounds help to move the action along. Here’s a scene in which the youngest boy and the runaway girl go on a rampage through the neighborhood; while she drives, he hits mailboxes with his baseball bat, that explode right on cue…

The level of interaction with the projected background was far more complex than original anticipated; virtually every element is pulled up on the spot, according to the actors’ performances and not the other way around (which among other things, could have been a disaster). Immediately following the above moment, the two run around a Wal-Mart, breaking stuff all over the place, where they literally run down aisles in scene that is either intentionally or unintentionally reminiscent of the forward scrolling corridor sections in the first Contra. Though my favorite moment are the outside the console ones, like how a scene starts to glitch up, so the director of the play gets up and goes towards the NES, which is set to the side is “running” the show, pops out the cart, blows inside, and puts it back in the system.

There’s also a few song and dance numbers; here we have the boys recollecting that aforementioned missionary trip to overseas to spread the gospel of Joseph Smith. The idea of knocking on doors as guitars is pretty much genius…

The story is compelling, as is much of the acting (the core cast that comprises the family was simply awesome, especially the mother and youngest son), and as already noted, the presentation is outstanding, almost genius at times, with a great chip-oriented soundscape. But it’s not totally perfect… that sister who doesn’t do such a stellar job of curing people of their ailments is constantly reminded of and tormented by her failures via zombies that she must constantly blow away with a shotgun in most scenes she’s in. The symbolism is cute, and certainly fits within the narrative structure, but was still a bit too heavy-handed in the end. It, along with a few other scenes, went on a bit longer than they need to be. Plus, despite the ultra helpful format, things got somewhat muddy and confusing in the end; that runaway daughter goes around town telling people of what happened, so the mother counteracts this by explaining that it’s just malarkey created by the psychiatrists who all want to control us. But then the daughter’s story somewhat changed from her own father being the abuser to the head of the Dudley clan.

I asked this to Dave, who explained to me that it was just a symptom of what the mom was talking about; because the accusations are b.s. there will naturally be inconsistencies. Though I simply chalked it up to the nature of memories being a confusing mess at times, coupled with the fact that the play as a whole is a glitched up cartridge, so not everything should be taken at face value. Speaking of Dave, he was one of the artists who contributed towards the 8-bit backgrounds; here’s his handy work in the final scene, which everyone agreed was most impressive. I just like how very Mega Man 3 it is; remember Spark Man’s stage?

Plus, it’s somewhat pointless to harp on any negatives since it’s ultimately still a work in progress; things are definitely subject to tightening up or to change in general. After the performance, I got the chance to speak with Steven Gridley, the man who came up with the story, created the music, and is basically the driving force behind the entire project; he mentioned that the whole point of the performance was to see what works in execution and what doesn’t (as most dress rehearsals tend to be), though no time frame was given when the next, and potentially final incarnation might hit the stage. Though I asked him to keep me abreast of when that day might be, because The Dudleys was genuinely awesome and something that totally needs to be checked out by everyone, especially those who have a passing interesting video games as a facet of art and culture. Again, mostly as a prime example of how to incorporate elements in an intelligent, successful manner!

Time for one last shot: here’s a closer look at Steven’s set-up, where he pulled up all the music and background elements on the fly. I couldn’t help but keep an eye on his as the play progressed, since he was constantly pushing this button or that, whether it be on a mixing board or Atari 2600…

… And I guess that’s it? Next time I should have another rundown of the games I’ve been playing (hopefully by then I will have managed to beat the ultra cheap last boss in Tekken 6), along with pics from tomorrow’s hijinks of course. As well as the latest round-up of game related links from across the web, though here’s a little something from GSW for right now, since it’s somewhat time sensitive; a bunch of neat-o, game oriented Jack-O-Lanterns!