SMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!!!

I was looking forward to going to Elina's house for a sushi party on Saturday night, but because it turned out I had to work on Sunday, this plan was dashed. This was quite the blow for the party, since I planned to bring my Wii along and bust it out during the mid-party festivities. This is a special weekend for Wii players in Japan. While all the fanatics cry about it in American forums, the Japanese (and me, by default) are busy playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Since I had Friday afternoon off, I joyously went to the city (boat, bus and footwork) to pick myself a copy. I'm always afraid of spending money in these instances, since Japanese media outlets are a cornocopia for japanaphiles. The gaming store has CDs, manga, DVDs and games from the NES era to the present day. Really anything I could ever want or hope for. They have this classic gaming corner with all the RPGs I grew up with, but in Japanese. Chrono Trigger? In the original Japanese? I sigh a lot lately, but I sigh there out of pleasure.

But Smash. Nintendo has got to be on the greatest streak in the world. It's perfect. The story mode, once you get past the audacity of its fan fiction qualities (Link meets Yoshi in the woods, Fox has tea with Zelda and Peach, Link and Zelda team up with Ganondorf despite his obvious desire to do them bodily harm), serves as a Nintendo grand tour. I came to admire it after awhile. There is no dialogue or explanation as to why these characters are together, yet they're distilled to their essences and play out their destinies according to their own internal logics.

The story mode took about eight hours to complete, and there's still more to it that I haven't quite puzzled out. But between the event matches, the single and all-star modes that you need to push 35 characters through, the stage builder, the trophy and sticker collection and the blessed online brawling, there's simply a wealth of activities.

A note about online brawling: I've never felt more satisfaction at having my ass handed to me. Despite my love of video games, I'm not that great a player, and it's telling in the online arena. But since it's anonymous and there's no ranking that would place me as the #1,673,294 brawler, I've found it's the best way to improve your game. I've seen characters used in ways I hadn't anticipated (someone trounced me and another brawler with Zelda last night using mostly long ranged attacks and some amazing evasion skills), and altered my play style accordingly.

Fun times, and I'm playing it a month before it's released in America. And I can't help gloating a little. It's too much fun not to.

Welcome to the Galaxy

I have quite a bit to post from October, but I've been busy playing Super Mario Galaxy in my free moments. I've wanted to gush about it to someone and Okuma suggested Takeuchi-sensei, but I think he just wanted to see the look on Takeuchi's mustachoid face when I brought it up. It's not the first time the teachers have ribbed him for looking like Mario.

My gaming habits have changed--particularly in terms of Mario games. Instead of helter-skelter running around, skipping to new worlds with the bare minimum of stars, I instead play each level (galaxy) through as many times as possible, stripmining it of goodies before moving on. This works most of the time: occasionally a comet blows by a galaxy and opens up a new star and I must return to a previous galaxy I thought I'd conquered.

I haven't played a game in a long time where I had almost complete, unending joy even when a level is being frustrating. I exclaim and curse and have laughed my ass off at various points. It's just a pleasure to play!

That's enough gushing for now.

Let's Get Together!

World of Warcraft has fallen to the wayside as I'm playing through Zelda and Paper Mario. WoW has a level cap of 70 and I am currently 48, but I'd like to attain that goal to experience some of what WoW endgame has to offer. I was clipping along at leveling at a decent pace, but between three games, I only have so much time, and since I plan to reactivate my FFXI account come June to experience some of the new content, I've stepped away from one time-consuming massive since I know I'll be busy with another in a few weeks.

But, wonder of wonders, I've been talking with Jeremy and Nolan back in the states and it's possible that we'll be playing WoW together on the weekends when I have some free time. I'm hoping to get a hold of Trevor to see if he would care to join us.

I bought a Wii this past weekend, and true to sites I've seen before, the safety manual is a little whacked.

But now, me and my Wii:



(Sorry, my digital camera broke recently and only have my phone's camera)

I'm working my way through Zelda and Super Paper Mario. Both of which I have little understanding of story-wise, though both seem to have a theme of demonic squares/pixels.

Immersed

I've given up Final Fantasy XI since it has a sado-masochistic reward system for the amount of required effort. Instead I've been playing World of Warcraft. In addition to actually rewarding a decent amount of effort, it's a lot more dynamic to play.



I become addicted easily to these games. They provide me precious English communication with souls that can actually effectively converse. I study Japanese, of course, but I crave English conversation that elementary students and low-level JHS students cannot provide. Some of the 9th graders can communicate pretty well, but not at with the necessary amount of engagement I crave.

So yes, back to WoW.