Aya Brea Cosplay

Before I get to the main point of this particular post, here’s a treat. I found the “shower scene” from Parasite Eve 2 on You Tube while checking out this other stuff. Watching it makes me want to play the game again…

Granted, a lot of younger gamers will think it a bit lame, but it was pretty cool for its time and the game is one of the better ones for the old PS1.

On to the new stuff.  I was checking my blog stats and clicked on one of the “referrer” links.  It took me to a page devoted to all things Aya Brea, one of which turned out to be a blog devoted to “cosplay.”

For those like me who haven’t the faintest idea what “cosplay” is, here’s a brief description from wikipedia:

Cosplay (コスプレ ,kosupure^?), short for “costume play”,^[1] is a type of performance art whose participants outfit themselves, with often-elaborate costumes and accessories, as a specific character or idea. Characters are usually sourced in various Japanese and East Asian media, including manga, anime, tokusatsu, comic books, graphic novels, video games, and fantasy movies. Other sources include performers from J-pop, J-rock, visual kei, fantasy music stories (such as stories by the band Sound Horizon), novels, and objects from cyberspace or the real world that are unique and dramatic (especially if they have or can be given an anthropomorphic form).

Cosplay participants (“cosplayers”) form a subculture centered around wearing their costumes and reenacting scenes or inventing likely behavior inspired by their chosen sources. In some circles, the term cosplay has been broadened to include simply wearing a costume, without special consideration given to enacting characters in a performance context.

Here’s the link, if you would like to read the entire article.

So I wound up at Cosfantasy, a site that features photo galleries of various cosplayers portraying their favorite characters.  I jetted on over to the Aya Brea archive and was pleasantly surprised, as I am sure you will be when you click here.

Granted, Aya Brea probably isn’t one of the more complicated characters to “cosplay,” especially if you happen to be a slender Japanese girl with long blond hair, but this girl looks exactly like Aya.  It’s awesome.  I didn’t navigate around much, but some of the other costumes looked very elaborate, and I would imagine that these folks are spending a lot of time, or money, or both, to pursue this form of performance art.

I’m curious about the legal issues involved, though.  Further into the wikipedia article, the writer states that:  Since the design of the clothing is originated from mostly fictional characters from manga, anime, tokusatsu, comic books, graphic novels, video games, and fantasy movies, the design itself is not copyrighted by the author or the maker of these forms of publication. Therefore, small manufacturers are able to take advantage of this by simply produce and sell packaged set costumes to cosplay fans.

I’m not sure I buy that.  If you tried to manufacture and sell Superman, Spiderman, and X-Men costumes, I would imagine that Marvel Comics would slap a Cease & Desist on you faster than the proverbial speeding bullet.  Why would video game characters be any different?  I don’t see a problem if people want to make their own costume and use it for their own cosplay, but if they are being made to sell than I can see some trouble down the road.

Anyway, it is not my intent to mess with other people’s thang, so I’ll let somebody else pop the top on that particular can of worms.  In the meantime, enjoy Aya.  If you haven’t already, buy the game and play it.  I like PE2 a bit more than PE1, but both are good games and quite striking visually, at least for their time.

Why Can’t I Find A Nintendo Wii?

You expect this sort of thing right after a new video game system is launched.

I’m cool with that.

But it has been 15 months since the Nintendo Wii was released in the U.S. and I still can’t get my hands on one of the G.D. things. I got my oldest son’s XBox 360 last summer (birthday present) with no problem whatsoever. Walked right into Walmart, got the dude in the blue vest to get one out of the case for me, paid for the damn thing, done.

My youngest child wants the Nintendo Wii. He wants a Nintendo Wii with all the hope, desire, and intensity of a middle-aged man lusting after a woman half his age. December of last year began our “journey to the center of the HELL” tour, and as a result, we were unable to get him his system as we had hoped (and sort of promised, way back when the eldest got the 360).

My youngest son is the sweetest, most good-natured and forgiving soul on this planet. I love him to bits, and I am really looking forward to seeing the joy on his face when I present him with this game system. He goes over to his cousin’s house every so often–they have the system–and when he comes home it (the Wii) is all he can talk about for days.

So I came into a little extra money. A very little extra money, let me assure you. I called Walmart and I could hear the lady leaning into the phone, speaking in a conspiratorial tone.

“No, we don’t have any in stock. We never know when they will ship because they don’t come on our regular trucks. They are sent Fed Ex. We get anywhere from three to twelve units per shipment, and they are usually gone within thirty minutes.”

What? This system has been out for over a year and still with this “standing in line” shit?

So I called up GameStop. Pretty much the same story, except that he could tell me what day they took delivery of the damn thing. Tuesday’s, eleven a.m. He said the store opens at ten, and the line starts forming about an hour or so before that. So I guess if you are an unemployed loser game-geek, you’re in good shape. Otherwise, too fucking bad.

I asked him if they sold it online. They do. The catch is that you have to buy a “bundled” package. The Wii unit, bare-bones, $250.000 (a phenomenal price compared to the freakin 360 and PS3). The Wii as part of GameStop’s “bundled” package? $480.00. Plus 10.00 shipping.

They throw in a couple of crappy games that probably aren’t selling anyway, an extra controller, call the whole thing a “bundle” and jack the price up over two hundred dollars.

So, it would appear that my son has to wait another year or more, until everybody else gets their Nintendo Wii, or I can bend over and take it up the ass from GameStop on one of these “bundled” systems. And there is no gaurantee even with that, as the website clearly states that “quantities are limited” and “orders are filled on a first come first served basis.”

My wife–who loves our dear son every bit as much as I–came charging into my office like the the U. S. Army 1st Cavalry Division to tell me that she had found them! For a great price! On Ebay!

There followed a discussion that came within a you-know-what hair of turning into an all-out argument. First off (I explained), people buying and then reselling the damn things on Ebay (at a nice profit, of course) is part of the reason that you can’t find them in the stores. Hey, I’m a capitalist. I’m all over the free-market economy thing. But that sort of reselling ought to be illegal. The second issue is one of pure paranoia. I’m gonna send $300 to some shmuck living in a double-wide littered with empty beer cans and Nintendo Wii boxes stacked to the ceiling? I daresay I shant. In fact, I daresay kiss my fat white ass about that.

Of greater importance is that fact that when you buy one of these systems at a regular retailer, you get a receipt with the unit’s serial number clearly printed on it–a “must have” when it comes to sending the thing back to Nintendo for repair or replacement (which happens a lot more often than you might think, given the nature of the components, and the rate that Nintendo is cranking the systems out, trying to keep up with demand). I don’t care if the seller has a “95% positive” rating, and I don’t care if they promise to mail me the receipt with the unit. The whole idea gives me that “icky feeling” they taught us about back in third grade.

If it was just me, I’d take a moral stand on the issue and go buy one of Sony’s outrageously high-priced PS3’s. I feel like it is Nintendo’s responsibility to make the damn game system available in quantities that allow people a reasonable chance at obtaining one of them. But my son, age seven, doesn’t fully grasp the whole “boycott Nintendo” thing. When I explained it to him he nodded enthusiastically, then proceeded to ask me why Nintendo can’t ask Santa’s elves to help them make more systems.

I told him that it was because Nintendo is run by a bunch of communists who actually hate children. Then I told him to go play his GameCube and leave me alone for awhile.

Vintage Game Systems (Pt. 1)

So here I am pondering the fact that I do not have the latest video game systems.  Things have been pretty good the last couple of years…I was able to afford a PS2 and Nintendo’s GameCube when they came out, and I’m not an X-Box fanboy, so I pretty much had everything that I wanted.

Times have changed.  I can’t just run out and drop a butt-load of money on a new system (or games for one, even if I had it).  I have to wait and save, just like most other people.  Worse, being the responsible adult that I supposedly am, I have to buy systems for my kids before I can indulge my own wants and desires.  The eldest got his X-Box 360 last summer, and the youngest is still waiting for his Wii.  I figure we’ll get around to my PlayStation 3 about the time they come out with the new wave of systems.  Which sucks ass.

Still, at my age I can still remember when all we had were these systems.  I can still remember when these “pong” clones hit the stores, and being just as desperately pissed because we didn’t have the money to get one.  I don’t remember what the version was in the stores where I lived…I think this Bentley was sold in Europe at the time.  Whatever it was, it worked the same way: you moved the long white bar up and down with a rotary controller to keep your opponent from zinging the little white blip past you.  I found a bunch of these old systems at a thrift store a few months back, and bought them.  Most of them don’t work, but we hooked up one that did.  It was a lot of fun.  For about eight minutes.

Never had an Atari…too damn expensive…but I remember how much fun the old Pong game was before they came out with the Atari, and how bad it sucked shortly thereafter.  In my twenties, on my own and able to foolishly spend my money however I wished, I bought an original Nintendo Entertainment System (8-bit?  I never kept track of the “bits”).  That was pretty cool, although I think the only games we had for it were the two that came with the system (Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros.).

Pretty cool, that is, until a few years later, when I got my first PlayStation.  That was kind of a turning point for me.  Since then, I find that I can’t really get into any of the “retro” games.  I found an old NES at (what else?) a thrift store, and a butt-load of games to go with it.  I hooked it up, it worked, and I messed around with it.  For about eight minutes.  Same thing for Super Nintendo.  It’s not the inferior graphics so much as it is that I just can’t seem to find a game on those systems that doesn’t bore me after a short period of time.

The point?  Well, obviously, you don’t miss what you don’t have.  When all I had was Pong, I loved it.  The minute they came out with something better, Pong sucked ass and I wanted the new system.  Then they came out with an even AWESOMER! system…and on and on and on.  It’s about the games, ultimately.  Who cares about the system, it’s the games that they can create for it that you care about.  Better system=better games, simple as that.  Back when all we had was PlayStation and Nintendo 64, it was simple.  All the games that I wanted to play were on PS.  In fact, I have a used 64 machine now, and all the games you can nab out of dump-bin at Game Stop.  Still can’t find a game for that bastard that I like playing.

So I figure I have about a year’s worth of stuff to play on my PS2 and GameCube…games I have on hand that I haven’t played, and games that I never bought new that I might be able to pick up used.  Maybe longer.  I’m a pretty slow gamer.  Meanwhile, all the games that I really want to play (can you say Call of Duty 4?  Can you say Tomb Raider 8?  Can you say Resident Evil whatever number they are up to?) are coming out on the new systems.

I guess I won’t be watching much X-Play over the next year.

Tomb Raider Anniversary Rant (and some other crap)

Has anybody else gotten pissed off at this game and just quit? Am I the only one? I love me some Tomb Raider, don’t get me wrong. I’ve been playing since about the time III was released for Playstation, and I went back and bought I and II. Since that time, I’ve been snatching new editions off the shelf just about as fast as the dude at Wal-Mart can put them up there.

I liked Tomb Raider: Legend. I thought Crystal Dynamics did a bang-up job with it, and I had high hopes for Anniversary when it came out. I was a little disappointed later, when I got it home, to learn that it was basically just a remake of the original Tomb Raider, but what the heck. I haven’t played the original in a few years, and I was sure that CD would add enough interesting features to keep everything interesting. The game starts out well. In fact, the first 7.9 levels flowed by quite enjoyably. It was right at the end of level 8, Greece-Tomb of Tihocan, when the train jumped the tracks.

One word: centaurs. There are two things that will frustrate me to the point of abandoning an otherwise enjoyable video game. One is an insanely hard boss battle lobbed into the middle of the game like a grenade. The other is control/camera issues that make it nearly impossible to defeat said insanely hard boss despite the fact that you know exactly what to do because you cheated and read the strategy guide. The centaurs at the end of level 8 satisfied both of these requirements, and I almost walked away from it at that point. Hours of Internet searching later, it finally dawned on me that my problem was with the new “bullet-time” adrenaline-dodge feature that CD made a part of the game. I had been ignoring this feature–as cool as it looks–because I don’t much care for crap like that. Looks pretty, fine, but not using it wasn’t taking anything away from my game–until I got to these stupid centaurs. Fine. I’ll learn it, then. Whatever. I got past that point, eventually, but not without some vague misgivings about the rest of the game. I was barely over halfway through the game. How much more of this kind of crap was I going to have to deal with?

Part two of this little drama occurred in level 10, Egypt-Obelisk of Khamoon. There is a spot where you have to jump backwards off of a wall at the upper arc of a wall-run to grab a ledge behind you. There are several problems with this particular sequence. One, you have to adjust your height on the grapple-hook line to a very specific spot in the wall so that you reach the correct position at the top of your run. Two, you have to somehow keep the camera adjusted such that, at the precise moment, it is directly behind Lara and facing the wall squarely. Improper camera placement means that when you make your jump backwards, she leaps off in virtually every direction BUT backwards, toward the G.D. ledge she needs to grab.

I got stuck there for several days, climbing up the same stupid blocks back to the same stupid area, making the same stupid run-n-jump, and hurtling to the same stupid death, over and over and over and over…. I work for a living. I don’t need another job. I play video games for entertainment and relaxation. There is nothing entertaining or relaxing about performing the same dumbass moves over and over again, all with the same dumbass result. The game play grinds to a halt. The fun grinds to a halt. Frustration sets in. Back to the strategy guide (very helpful, they advised me to “perform a wall run and jump backwards to grab the ledge behind Lara.” Thanks!), back to the Internet. Nothing, other than some kind soul somewhere posted a pic of the proper starting position that Lara should be at on the wall before you begin running back and forth like an idiot. I was this close to dumping the game again when I got it, entirely by accident. I sat there, stunned, staring at the image of Lara dangling from that stupid ledge while the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang Hallelujah! faintly in the background. Then I found out that it just leads to a stupid artifact, or secret, or whatever the hell they call it, and I didn’t even have to make that jump to proceed through the game.

AAAAAIIIIIIGGGGHHHH!!!!!!

Okay. My bad. I’m a dumbass. Fine. Just as long as they don’t put one of those in there where you HAVE to make the jump in order to move forward in the game…

They do. Natla’s Mines. Gotta drop down in this one area to grab the stupid green fuse, and by God you gotta do another wall-run to jump backwards and grab the ledge behind you to get back to the stupid area where you can use the stupid green fuse. I tried it a couple of times, but my heart just wasn’t in it. Maybe someone a lot younger than me has the patience required to sit there and do the same moronic move over and over (and over and over and over) until they accidentally make the right combination of button presses to complete the task and move on down the road (or mine shaft, in this case). I just don’t have it in me. I had to work half a day this weekend man, I’m gonna waste what little time off I have left fucking with that piece of shit? I don’t think so. At the very least, you would have thought that CD would put a “checkpoint” right in front of that thing so that you don’t have to go all the way back to the movable box, make all those stupid jumps back to the fuse area, and pick up the G.D. fuse again before leaping to your death (again).

I don’t know how long I’ll let the game sit. Probably not that long. It gnaws at the back of my mind…that game kicked your ass…you paid fifty bucks for that shit…Crystal Dynamics screwed you out of fifty bucks dude…they’re LAUGHING at you…Lara thinks you’re a weenie…

So, instead, I drank up a bunch of beer and took all these wacky pictures you see here. It’s a Christmas tree in my office, and it has all these fiber optic lights that change colors and shit. I set the shutter speed on my camera to 1 second and then set a 2 second delay so that I could move the camera around while the camera took the picture. Suppressed the flash. Can’t remember the f-stop setting thingie.

Maybe if I act like I’m gonna jump backwards, but then jump some other direction, it will trick the game into accidentally making Lara jump backwards and grab that G.D. ledge…yeah…that might work…