Is the Blue Bomber Dead?

Criticizing about a franchise that is temporarily on-hold regarding unannounced games aside from one currently exclusive to Apple's iOS platform might seem like a bad idea for a post. But looking back at the cancelled games in recent time plus Capcom's behaviour surrounding them might seem on the contrary instead.

Seeming as I am a very big Mega Man fan, this has concerned me recently. After the cancelled games Mega Man Legends 3 and Mega Man Universe, I was dissapointed, sure, but I held onto myself that the developers needed either a break or more time with the entire franchise.

Upon learning that Capcom stated that it was the fans fault for cancelling Legends 3, I got confused. Even after completing the so called prototype version, which would be available on the e-Shop on 3DS, this would be their official statement regarding cancelling it.

In Street Fighter X Tekken, Mega Man was then announced as a guest character, but as is always the case, the fans wondered which form of him would appear. No one expected to see his cover appearance from the very first NES game. I could understand the humor perfectly, but others saw this as a decline of some sort.

This year, the 25th anniversary of the franchise in December is approaching steadily, and recently, a "social RPG" has been announced as said before for iPhones. Called Mega Man Xover(Crossover), it brings the main playable characters from each sub-series together, but other details are scarce at the moment.

It's too early to say how good this game will be, but judging from the screenshots only, the fact that it's a social RPG, an exclusive to iOs platforms and looking at the graphics, Xover has been received terrible by communities so far.

Street Fighter X Tekken,

and Mega Man Xover. Are you mocking us Capcom?

Right now, people are worried if this is supposed to be the only thing worth celebrating about it's anniversary. Like Metroid's anniversary, which by the way was not celebrated officially, Mega Man might suffer the same fate or even worse depending on how high your hopes are for Xover or anything else that might spontaneously still happen before or in December.

We might be considered even lucky if you look at it in a different perspective. Technically, the blue bomber isn't dead, but Capcom's faith in the franchise seems to be. As many of us know, Capcom is a business company that attempts to gain profit as many times as possible with re-releases, expansion packs and ports.

Next to saying that, Keiji Inafune, one of the designers of Mega Man and a large figure in the Japanese industry, had left Capcom after criticizing the same industry in public, saying that developers have been making awful games in comparison towards Western developers and that "Japan is at least five years behind".

And, after remembering an obscure Korean MORPG called Mega Man Online, which is unlikely to release any time soon, this leaves me towards the franchise's current status. Is the blue bomber dead in a certain way? Is Capcom's mascot unfitting anymore?

When will we see a 3D breakthrough of Mega Man similar to Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy and others, if ever? And by breakthrough, I mean a global critical and commercial success, despite the minor success of Legends or X8.

I think that it's time that Capcom will have to re-invent Mega Man once again despite having so many incarnations already. Come up with a new formula, reaching out for larger audiences, hell just look at Metroid: Other M''s physics for an example of how smoothly and fun a new 3D game could become.

But before that, it's really time for Capcom to take Mega Man serious once again. The fanbases in both the West and the East remain passionate as far as I know, the need is still there. Just once you announce a serious Mega Man game once again, stop pumping out titles every year, atleast that is something I am currently grateful for. Give it some time, like, right now. Huh.

Funny I should end like that.

Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

 (Mild)

 

The Nintendo DS has plenty of graphic adventures and visual novel games, some of them still perking my interest for trying them someday. I have also played all available titles for a particular franchise I will be talking about soon. But today, I'd like to focus on 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, developed by Chunsoft.

You wake up on a sinking ship, unable to remember how or why at first. Soon after, you meet up with the 8 other “contestants”: you have been put inside the “Nonary Game”, orchestrated by Zero, their mysterious mutual foe.

999 felt a bit like a Saw movie, and the dialogue starts out slow and rather dull, but once the first incident happens, the game is on a roll with its intelligent writing, bringing up scientific and historic topics occasionally, most of the time being relative towards their current insane situation. So it takes a while to build up, and I can easily imagine that some of the gamers will be put off by the speed of the text appearing. 

However, there is no need to rush in actual game time if you want to progress, even though you have basically only nine game hours to survive. The characters are dull at first, but progressively start opening up their personality and interests, creating teamwork but also conflicts.

Surprisingly there is a lot of cursing to be found here, I’m usually reading things like “darn” in adventure or RPG games, but not here. Some perversity here and there as well, not that I mind. And there are some disturbing images hidden. 

Multiple endings with extreme different results make it a replayable one, especially the first time for me, as I had acquired the bad ending where practically all the nine persons died with no revelations, tempting me very much to start over again, because a fast forward button and “memories” from the first playthrough were now available. 

The puzzles were quite fine, with their hexadecimal numbers and digital roots alongside mysterious music to back you up throughout the trials. They even became quite difficult the farther you came. I wouldn’t say that it’s a humoristic game in general, but it exists. 

Anyway, after beating the game, and most likely leaving you behind with finding out about the truth, the next time I beat it, under the normal ending, many twists were revealed, however, the game once again ended unexpected, or let’s say, not wrapped up.

And as I started on my third fastened playthrough, even more twists, theories, mysteries and clues dropped by, resulting into 999 being a very well written mystery plot, given that you have what it takes to beat the game three times. 

Thankfully, my urge to find out about the mysterious murderer who after all killed all people the first time around motivated me to speed through the two upcoming playthroughs that followed until the respective new events emerged. No doubt was I left with curious questions even after beating it completely.

It's rare for me to be interested into beating it consecutively three times, but 999 had me quite interested by finding out the motivation and the purpose of this all. I'd say that it's a very good graphic adventure with a strong narrative plus plenty of suspense and drama moments to fill in your experiences.

Rating: 8.5

Surrealism Cinema

Surrealism is a cultural movement from the 1920's that has touched various fields such as literature and music, philosophically being about anything but reality. Considered as being abstract and non sequitur, as well as regularily using symbolism, it is an interesting topic for me.

With that said, let me talk about some of my favorite surreal movies briefly, using strange scenes as examples, but admittedly, I have summarized some of them in this post already, without regrets.

The Man in the Planet, as depicted here from Eraserhead(1977), is thought to represent many things by us. Some say that he symbolizes God or Satan, others see him as the personification of Henry's fear, or perhaps he is just some kind of a machinist pulling the levers who happens to be inside a planet. Is there an explanation for this or any other scene in the movie? Only David Lynch knows the truth, because many scenes can be interpreted in different ways.

This odd dream picture isn't necessarily surreal visually, but Monanieba(1984) has several scenes that seemed out of this Georgian movie's world, such as knights being present in certain scenes. Otherwise than having an interesting story about a family's political influence with strong dialogue and philosophy, Varlam Aravidz's mere presence alone seemed more grand than the boundaries of Monanieba. I especially loved his speech towards the majority, because it's highly convincing to follow this trembling man. In any case, it was a strange yet good anti Soviet movie for sure.

Conspirators of Pleasure(1996) is a strange Czech film about unusual humans featuring their own songs plus there is absolutely no spoken dialogue present. Each of them have their own personal pleasure habit that is so bizarre at times because of the given imagery that it becomes fascinating as well as disturbing for some of us. As if having no conversations or the odd behavior of the characters wasn't enough already, once you arrive at the second half of this surrealistic and perverted journey, you are officially in the weird zone of cinema once again. 

Just to point out some noteworthy scenes, a man and a woman create effigies of each other and they proceed towards torturing and punishing them in their own ways, a police agent accompanied by opera music is obsessed with objects touching his body, a postwoman created bread balls and pops a ton of them inside her ears plus nose and a newsagent constructs a machine that lets him masturbate whenever his favorite newsreader comes on the television. But perhaps the best scenes of these characters is their look of complete bliss and satisfaction upon achieving their pleasures.

As with the previous film, and also being directed both by Jan Svankmajer, this Czech re-visioning of Alice in Wonderland also uses beautiful stop motion techniques in order to present us the plot. Illogical objects and strange themes play through this world famous literature. It borrows heavily, but adds its own way of cinematography, depicting a surrealistic take which builds up slowly, yet strangely.

Neco z Alenky(1988) is a unique take mostly because of the effects being put to use, considered as creepy by some. The White Rabbit plays a larger role in this escapism, rather small area of rooms. Not many other prominent characters appear until near the end, but nonetheless do give this a try if you are curious. The architecture was indeed comforting and frightening according to others, hence being bizarre surreal cinema and all. I have also probably never seen so much stop motion scenes at once in a feature film.

One of my most favorite movies out there is The Holy Mountain(1973), a Chilean film by Alejandro Jodorowsky which has a ton of absolutely crazy scenes, and it is by the way also most definitely not a movie for everyone. A Christlike figure wanders through bizarre, grotesque scenarios filled with religious and sacrilegious imagery. He meets a mystical guide who introduces him to seven wealthy and powerful individuals, each representing a planet in the solar system. These seven, along with the protagonist, the guide and the guide's assistant, divest themselves of their worldly goods and form a group of nine who will seek out the Holy Mountain, in order to displace the gods who live there and become immortal.

This summary was stated according to IMDb, and it's all true, but these freaky scenes alone are worth seeing for those who are open minded, who wish to be enlightened and who want to have seen one of the most "out of this world" movies ever in my opinion. Best of all perhaps for me is the ending, which will explain the entire movie fundamentally.

Stalker(1979) is one of the slowest moving films alongside the other Russian movies of Andrey Tarkovskiy about the mysterious Zone, a room which is able to grant wishes. It's a deep philosophical movie with 3 entirely different characters coming together to approach the Zone. There isn't much else to say, other than some of the movie's iconic scenes, including the transition from black and white to colorful graphics, the long take river and rainfall scenes and the telekinesis scene at the ending. Stalker is most of all a movie to experience in patience, wisdom and concentration.

Last but not least is one of the most beautiful surreal movies I have ever seen, which is Sayat Nova(1968), an Armenian movie. Also known as The Color of the Promegranate, it features juxtaposition scenes sticking out, immersive images, a curious pace and unbeatable symbolism for me. You might have seen pieces of it during Juno Reacter's God is God video montage, but otherwise, consider this one of the lost diamonds from the 20th century of cinema.

It's a visual masterpiece for me personally because of the surreal and religious objects being portrayed so exquisite, not to mention the sounds. The movie was done before I knew it, I cannot praise the immersion enough. About the storyline? Really, it doesn't matter, it's all about the experience. This was such a mysterious and beautiful movie for me, that it has become an inspiration source for me.